


he (walked like, looked like) burned like summer

by foxfireflamequeen



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Disability, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Injury, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-08 06:31:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 49,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11640900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxfireflamequeen/pseuds/foxfireflamequeen
Summary: “Yakov,” Yuri says. “How do you steal a faerie?”





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the rbb mod for putting this event together and being so patient with us, and to [Farasha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farasha) and [shortprints](https://shortprints.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing for me and putting up with my nonstop whining.
> 
> Even more thanks to [midoriyaizuhugs](https://twitter.com/midoriyaizuhugs) for being the most wonderful artist I could have asked for. I have the artist's permission to embed the art into the fic; she can be reached on her linked twitter for verification of this. Please check out her works; she's incredible!
> 
> This fic was a journey, and I hope you enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

Yuri doesn’t remember the first seventeen days. On day eighteen, his coach helps him hobble into the elevator and then his apartment, and says something about asking one of his rinkmates to come check on him. Yuri tells him to leave him alone.

He takes his painkillers, pets his cat, and lies on the couch and stares at the ceiling. He doesn’t turn on his phone.

On day sixty-two, he doesn’t watch the Olympics.

Eventually, his little bubble of self-pity is burst when his grandfather makes the trip to St. Petersburg and lets himself in with the key he’s never had occasion to use before. He looks at the empty takeout containers and overflowing laundry basket and sighs, and spends the next three hours cleaning up Yuri’s mess.

On day seventy-three, Yuri cries himself to sleep in his grandfather’s arms.

When he turns on his phone on day seventy-four, his voicemail is full and there are hundreds of missed calls and messages. _Otabek Altin_ sits at the top of the list of names.

“Are you ready, Yurotchka?” his grandfather calls from the door, where his coach and two rinkmates are standing with his suitcases and Potya’s carrier. Yuri turns his phone back off and takes one last look around his apartment, the boxes marked for shipping and donation, and tries to feel something for this empty place that has been his home for four years.

He folds his crutches under his arms. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The little village where Yuri spent the first seven years of his life is entirely unchanged, untouched by the rest of the world. He’s been away for so long that their neighbors seem to have forgotten to dislike him, or maybe being famous has changed something; they smile and wave like they never used to as he digs his crutches into the ground and limps through the streets next to his grandfather. It’s the end of the short winter; most of the snow has melted away, and there are children playing in the muddy slush. Their mothers don’t hide them behind their skirts when Yuri looks their way.

“I would not have asked you to come if things weren’t different now,” his grandfather says when Yuri asks. “There hasn’t been a sighting in years.”

His grandfather still has a landline because there’s little cell phone coverage, and Yuri has to plug a portable modem into his laptop to get a proper broadband connection. Against his better judgment, he goes through his social media feed. Phichit Chulanont took the first Olympic medal for his country, and Otabek Altin beat JJ Leroy to gold. Otabek Altin is facing reprimand from the ISU for pulling a stupid, dramatic stunt at the awards ceremony, where he took off his gold medal and laid it on the podium along with his flowers, like Yuri was fucking _dead_ or something. “We all know who this really belongs to,” he said loud and clear when the audience went quiet, and JJ Leroy of all fucking people nodded and kissed his bronze.

“For Yuri Plisetsky,” he said with a smile. “May his rage get him through his recovery.”

What’s truly galling is that that’s what works; not Otabek’s kind, thoughtful gesture that would have embarrassed and pleased the Yuri from eighty-seven days ago, but JJ fucking Leroy who knew exactly how to kick Yuri’s ass into gear from a continent away. There will be no recovery, his doctors have all told him, but for the first time since the Incident Yuri drags his ass out of bed and into the shower of his own volition, cheeks red with fury and determined to prove _everyone_ wrong.

If there can be no recovery, Yuri will find another way.

 

 

 

“Dedulya,” he says at dinner. “What did you mean, there hasn’t been a sighting in years? Are they gone?”

His grandfather spoons more pelmeni onto his plate. “Some people believe so, but I think they are hiding,” he says. “Remember to save some of the bread, Yurotchka.”

Yuri saves the bread. Before they go to sleep, he puts it on the ground outside with a bowl of milk.

 

 

 

He texts Otabek, _i’m alive_ , and his coach, _thanks for the help_.

Otabek texts back, _can i call?_

Yuri thinks about the nothingness he felt as he watched Otabek dedicate his gold medal to him, and the tens of messages he has yet to open. Otabek must be at the rink now, preparing for Worlds. If he calls, Yuri will hear the unmistakable sound of blades cutting through the ice in the background, or the echo of his voice in the locker room. It has been eighty-seven days since he last spoke to Otabek, and Yuri does not miss him at all.

He replies, _no_.

 

 

 

Without his phone and laptop, there are very few ways to spend time in the village. His grandfather refuses to let him come out on his boat until he’s evolved from crutches to at least a cane, and Yuri is tired of spending his time cooped up in their little house with only Potya for company. It reminds him too much of St. Petersburg.

Outside, it feels like he’s stepped back in time. The snow makes walking difficult for him, but there are earnest helpers at every turn. One little girl peppers him with questions as he makes his slow way down the street, keeping a careful eye on his crutches to make sure he doesn’t slip.

“What happened to your leg?” she wants to know. “Are you really famous? How did you get famous? I heard you have a cat.”

“You talk too much,” Yuri says, trying and failing to speed-hobble away from her.

“We don’t get many new people here,” she tells him. “You’re very exciting!”

“I’m not exactly new,” Yuri says. “Hey, is Yakov still kicking around?”

“Yakov Olegovich?” she asks. It’s the first time Yuri’s heard a kid address Yakov properly. He supposes many things have changed after all. “Yes, he lives where he’s always lived.”

Yuri changes his course and takes the path leading out of the village, but little Emilia hesitates, reaching out to tug the hem of his jacket.

“You shouldn’t leave the village on your own,” she says, biting her lip nervously, and Yuri thinks, not that many things. “I can’t come with you out there, or mama will be angry.”

“I’ll be fine, kid,” Yuri tells her, and pulls away. “I knew Yakov before you were born, and I have things to ask him.”

“I can ask my brother to go with you,” she blurts as Yuri makes his way out of the cluster of picturesque houses towards the less-ploughed stretch of road leading up to Yakov’s isolated cottage. Yuri waves a crutch at her, but doesn’t turn back.

 

 

 

Yakov Feltsman hasn’t changed since Yuri saw him last either, standing on the platform as the train carrying Yuri and his grandfather to St. Petersburg left the station. It’s been over ten years and he hasn’t gone fully bald. His wrinkled face cracks in a smile when he sees Yuri at the door.

“Come in, Yura,” he says. His eyes linger for a moment on Yuri’s bad leg, but he doesn’t comment on it. He still lists heavily to one side as he walks, fifty years after the injury that took him out of competitive skating.

“How are you settling in?” he asks as Yuri expertly maneuvers himself onto the sagging couch. His old dog bounds up to Yuri, digging her nose between Yuri’s legs in greeting. Yuri fends her off with a crutch.

“It’s fine,” he says, raising his voice so Yakov can hear him in the kitchen where he’s putting on the kettle. “People are nicer than I remember.”

“I told you,” Yakov calls back, because he’s never failed to take the chance to say it. “Humans have short memories. You are famous now, that is all that matters.”

He’s not wrong. Yakov was famous when he first came to this village, and now all anyone remembers him for is his crabbiness, and the way his cottage sits apart from everyone else’s. Angara submits herself to ear scratches with a pleased whuff, and it’s almost like Yuri’s seven again, hiding away in Yakov’s cottage and listening to him tell stories about skating in a big city in front of a bigger crowd as the kettle whistles on the stove.

“Tell me, then,” Yakov says eventually, pushing the tea into Yuri’s hands and sitting next to him on the couch, knees cracking under him like Yuri’s might when he’s healed. “What are you going to do about that leg of yours?”

Yuri pours his tea onto the saucer to let it cool, and sets it on the rickety table where Angara can sniff at it.

“Yakov,” he says. “How do you steal a faerie?”

 

 

 

It takes Yuri three days and a whole bottle of vodka to break Yakov down.

On day ninety-one, Yuri gathers up his Olympic gold medal, the tattered stuffed tiger he’s slept with since he was a child, and the worn pair of practice skates he couldn’t bear to leave behind. He takes his painkillers, clasps the steel chain Otabek gave him for his last birthday around his neck, and bids Potya goodbye.

“If I don’t come back,” he says, doling out extra affectionate chin scratches. “Take care of dedulya.”

 

 

 

It’s a long trek into the forest, made even longer by the slush on the ground hiding the faerie rings and the number of times Yuri has to stop to catch his breath, his leg easily tired. He walks until the path disappears and then walks some more to make sure no one can find him, then sits in the mud where the spring grass is just beginning to peek through.

“Well,” he says to the trees. “Here I am.”

The medal goes in the center, because it’s what he’s proudest of. The tiger to the left, for memories, and the skates to the right, for love. Then he closes his eyes, and waits.

 

 

 

When he wakes up, his offerings are where he left them, untouched.

 

 

 

Day ninety-two passes, and ninety-three. Ninety-four and ninety-five. Yuri falls into a routine. He gets up in the morning, takes his array of pills, feeds Potya, and packs a lunch. Then he goes deep into the forest and sits next to a faerie ring, lays out his offerings, and closes his eyes. Most days he falls asleep like that, and when he blinks awake it’s dark and nothing has changed. He goes home unsure if he’s disappointed or relieved, doesn’t text Otabek back, and lies to his grandfather about what he’s been doing all day at dinner. The next day he wakes up, and does it again.

He wishes he could give up. He wishes he could stop sleeping so much. He wishes he could feel something other than pain.

 

 

 

“He’s _pretty_ ,” someone whispers by his ear, so close he should be able to feel their breath. Yuri jolts awake, and it’s a minor miracle that he remembers to keep his eyes closed.

“Oh,” another voice says, disappointed. “You woke him up.”

“Hello, hello!” the first voice calls. “Won’t you look at us?”

The pain is always at its worst when he wakes up. Yuri takes a deep breath, then another, and shakes his head.

The fey are displeased. They rake their nails down his arms and pull his hair, pinch the skin of his elbows. One of them kicks his bad leg and Yuri cries out, and suddenly everything stops.

“You hurt him!” one of them scolds, petting his hair. “Pretty little thing, you must not hurt him.”

“He won’t _look_ ,” another says, petulant. “I want to see his _eyes_.”

Yuri screws his eyes shut, like that will save him if they decide to pluck them out of his head. His fear amuses them, he thinks. They titter and stroke their hands down his body, take his arms and reposition them like he’s a particularly interesting doll.

“This is so _shiny_ ,” someone says, and Yuri holds his breath for his medal to disappear.

“Don’t touch them!” the first voice snaps. “They’re not for us.”

“They are!” Yuri blurts, unthinking. “They’re for you, they are gifts!”

The laughter that surrounds him is—not human. It raises the hair on his arms and makes him jerk back in wordless terror, but Yuri can’t run. The only protection he has is tucked under the collar of his shirt, hidden from their creeping fingers and prying eyes. The steel chain tickles Yuri’s throat and doesn’t help him at all.

“No, pretty human,” one of them says, almost gentle. “They are not for us.”

It was the wrong thing to say, Yuri realizes. He needs to ask the right question, but he doesn’t know what that is.

“If not for you,” he starts, heart pounding in his ears. “Who are they for?”

The fey laugh again, and pinch his skin through his jacket. If he makes it out of this with both his eyes, he’ll have to remember to hide the bruises at dinner.

“You will find out,” says one of the voices. There are so many of them. “Keep your gifts for now, little one. Tomorrow is another day.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yuri hobbles home on shaking crutches well after dark, eyes miraculously intact. Potya won’t come near him, meowing pitifully at the door to his room, ears back and tail lashing. It provides the perfect backdrop for Yuri to breathe through his panic attack, stupid stuffed tiger clutched in his arms.

The next day, he stuffs his backpack full of treasures under his bed and unclasps the steel chain from around his neck.

 

 

 

Yakov is delighted that Yuri has given up. “What would I have said to your grandfather,” he says gravely. “If you got yourself stolen by the fair folk?”

“I was going to steal one of _them_ ,” Yuri points out. “Not the other way around.”

Yakov shakes his head like it’s the most ridiculous he’s heard, but his murky blue eyes are kind. “If it helps, Yura,” he says. “You wouldn’t have been the first skater to try.”

 

 

 

He has enough money and his grandfather is worried, so Yuri sets up a Skype appointment with a shrink. He expects it to be tedious and annoying, but all she does for the first hour is ask him questions about his cat. Even now Yuri can talk for ages about Potya, so he does.

It’s the first time in days that he’s talked to someone aside from his grandfather. When he ends the call he feels—lighter. It’s an improvement.

Yuri sets up weekly appointments until the end of the summer, then sets about looking for a physiotherapist.

 

 

 

Otabek looks the same as he did one hundred and twenty days ago. He wears his concern in the furrow of his brows and tries to sigh his relief discreetly so Yuri won’t see. “How is Potya?” he asks like nothing has changed, and Yuri thinks it’s unfair that he gets to pretend.

“Potya likes the village,” he tells Otabek, trying too, for his sake. They’ve been—something—for so long, it’s only fair that Yuri tries. “Dedulya brings home fresh fish and Potya eats the scales even though it makes him sick.”

The background moves behind Otabek. He’s walking from the small living room of his apartment to the bedroom, phone held up in front of his face. Yuri can’t do that anymore. He needs both arms for his crutches, and even when he graduates to a cane in another month or so he might always have a limp. The resentment rises in his throat like bile.

“Seung-gil’s dog is a monster; I met him the other day,” Otabek is saying, and Yuri blurts, “Congratulations on the Olympics.”

Otabek stops puttering around, settling in the darkness of his room. Yuri can’t see his expression.

“Turn on the lights,” he says.

Otabek turns on his lamp. It doesn’t do anything to change his face. He needs a new face, Yuri thinks, and wonders if faeries can do that, give someone a new face. Maybe Yuri could stand to look at his best friend again if he had a different face.

“Yura,” Otabek says after a moment of painful silence. “You don’t need to tell me the things you think you should. That gold should have been yours.”

“Shut up,” Yuri says reflexively, but he’s not annoyed, not the way he should be. It feels like he’s reciting lines from a play, but it makes Otabek relax, desperate for the familiarity. “You beat Leroy, which is what matters. You shouldn’t have pulled that stupid stunt. What’s the penalty anyway?”

“Just a fine,” Otabek says, starting to smile. He likes Yuri when he’s angry. “It’s no big deal. I did it for you.”

 _I never asked you to_ , Yuri wants to scream, but can’t summon the energy. “You’re an idiot,” he says instead, and hopes Otabek won’t notice. “What are you doing for the off-season? Do you have any training camps scheduled?”

Otabek blinks, surprised that Yuri wants to hear about skating, but he’s never questioned Yuri’s decisions, and he doesn’t start now. For once, Yuri is not glad for this.

Potya leaps down from the window and then onto the bed, muddy paws leaving tracks all over the carpet and sheets. Yuri pulls him into his lap anyway, scratching behind his ears. It’s only then that he realizes that Otabek has stopped talking, and Yuri didn’t hear a word he said.

Otabek must realize it too, but he doesn’t mention it, like always. Yuri’s starting to hate that. Everything has changed, and here they both are, pretending like it matters.

“Sorry,” he offers quietly. “I’m just a little tired.”

“No, I get it,” Otabek says immediately, awkward like they haven’t been in years. He hesitates, then adds, “Listen, Yura, I’m not saying this for right now, just for you to think about. If you want me to come visit. Or. Tell me, when you’re ready for me to visit.”

His eyes go soft. “I’d like to see you.”

Yuri looks away. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready for that, to let Otabek see him writhe with pain in the morning before he’s fully awake, to let him see the way he can’t even fucking _walk_ anymore. His shrink tells him that will change in time, but Yuri isn’t sure he wants it to.

He’s lost skating. He may have lost walking. He’s lost his anger, and his need to be the best. He hasn’t even managed to get hard in over one hundred and twenty days. Everything Otabek likes about him Yuri has lost, and he doesn’t know how long he’ll be able to keep up the ruse over a video call, let alone in person.

“I’d like to see you too,” he says, and that part is not a lie.

 

 

 

He could go to university, his shrink says like it’s no big deal. Her name is Yuko, she has three children, and she went to university after she had all three. It makes a little more sense when he finds out they’re triplets.

Yuri considers this. He’s never wanted to go to university. He always thought he’d retire and then go into coaching, like every other retired skater worth knowing. The idea has no appeal, but he figures it’ll do, so he agrees.

Yuko smiles at him, and says, “You’re young, and an accomplished skater. I’m sure there are other careers you could pursue in skating.”

Theoretically, Yuri is qualified to train as a judge, and people would pay a good amount to have him commentate at competitions. These are also things he has never considered.

“You don’t have to give up on it,” Yuko says.

This is day one hundred and twenty-five.

 

 

 

He’s not sure what’s more bizarre, really, that he has fairly definitive proof that faeries exist, or that JJ fucking Leroy is facetiming him.

Yuri opens with, “What do you want,” and Leroy blinks back at him, face too close to the camera. His eyes are too far apart; he looks like a fucking camel, and Yuri tells him so.

“Just wanted to check in,” Leroy says when he’s done sputtering. _He_ didn’t have the decency to call from home; Yuri hears the smooth stroke of blades on ice in the background, and feels his heart speed up. “Make sure you’re not dead, ask how you’re recuperating, you know. Friend stuff.”

“We’re not friends,” Yuri points out, amused despite himself. Leroy waves his hand dismissively.

“Semantics,” he says. “Do you have a timeline set up yet?”

Yuri blinks. “Timeline for what?”

“To come back, obviously,” Leroy says, matter-of-fact. “I mean, I know it’ll take a while, but what will it be? Two, three years? Or five, maybe? I’ll be retired by then, though. That would be boring, if you only came back after I retired.”

Yuri’s mind goes blank. “Are you _insane?_ ” he manages after a moment. “Who comes back after a five year break?”

“You could,” Leroy says with earth-shattering confidence. “Or not, but hey, shit happens. Are you seriously not going to even try?”

Yuri’s vision goes red. “ _Try?_ ” he shouts at his laptop. “There’s no guarantee I’ll ever walk unassisted again and you want me to try to _figure skate?_ ”

Leroy scoffs. “They always tell you that your career is over,” he says, and Yuri remembers that he’s had to make his own comeback, a full season after his injury with a metal brace in his back. There are things he can no longer do, but he still made it to bronze in Beijing.

“What would you have done,” Yuri asks. “If you couldn’t come back?”

“Thrown myself off a bridge, probably,” Leroy says, without an ounce of hesitation. Yuri wants to be more surprised, but he can’t exactly judge. He went looking for _faeries_.

It’s stupid. It’s crazy. Yuri promised himself he’d give up on this. He was going to maybe train as a judge, or like, write a book.

“I thought I could go to university,” he says weakly, and Leroy starts laughing.

“Plisetsky,” he says, wiping tears from his eyes. “You would get yourself expelled.”

 

 

 

For all that Leroy made him think, some rational part of Yuri’s brain is aware that it’s impossible. But Leroy did make him think, and on day one hundred and twenty-eight, Yuri pulls the backpack out from under his bed.

 

 

 

The fey are delighted to see him again.

“You’re back!” they cry with a hundred lovely voices, climbing into his lap and stumbling over his bad leg.

“Look at us!” they demand, and when Yuri refuses they get angry and scratch at his clothes with twig-like fingers.

“Summer is almost here,” they sigh, impervious to the way Yuri curls his arms over his head and hides his face in his knees to protect his eyes. “Will you dance with us then?”

“Come back!” they always say before they leave, his gifts lying untouched on the ground. “Tomorrow is another day!”

 

 

 

On day one hundred and forty, Yuri packs up his offerings, and glares at the trees. His arms are bleeding through his jacket, and his leg hurts so much from being pawed at it’s going to set back his recovery at least a couple weeks.

“You have seven more days,” he says to whoever’s listening. It’s probably in bad form to shout at the fey; Yakov and his grandfather would be horrified if they knew. But they’re not here, and Yuri is tired of nothing ever _changing_.

“You figure out your shit,” he says. “Or I’m going to go find some _other_ faeries who are _interested_.”

 

 

 

“You’re really very strange,” someone says, right by his ear as Yuri’s traipsing out of the forest. He whirls around instinctively and slams his eyes shut, but it’s too late, he’s already seen him, tall and slim, hair spilling over his shoulders like moonlight.

The faerie laughs, hauntingly inhuman, and Yuri takes an instinctive, teetering step back. A pair of hands shoot out to grab his shoulders, lowering him and his crutches to the ground with a gentleness Yuri hadn’t thought the fey capable of.

“I heard you have gifts,” the faerie says, voice lilting like the wind. Yuri sways towards the sound helplessly, and the faerie laughs again, stroking a long-fingered hand through his hair. The fey are tactile creatures, and Yuri has been without any other touch for a long time.

“I have gifts,” Yuri breathes, only barely remembering to clasp his fingers around the faerie’s wrist. The faerie doesn’t pull away, and Yuri wonders if he already knows what Yuri wants. “Will you take them?”

“If I take your gifts,” says the faerie. “Will you look at me?”

Yuri tightens his hand around the faerie’s wrist and thinks, _only if you choose wrong_. He says, “Take them and find out.”

Nothing changes in the faerie’s voice, but Yuri gets the feeling that he’s smiling. “You’re a clever little thief,” he says. Yuri heart gives a frightened jolt, but he steels his nerves and opens his backpack. He feels the faerie’s eyes on him as he pulls out the gifts and lays them on the ground.

The rules, as far as he knows, are simple. If the faerie chooses right, Yuri will have to let him go.

The faerie is very still. “This is the best you could do?” he asks after a moment. “Glory, and comfort, and warmth?”

He doesn’t sound quite as beautiful when he’s dismissing Yuri’s most precious possessions with disdain in his voice so strong it almost knocks Yuri over. Yuri’s heart stutters with a confused mix of anger, and delight that something other than _Leroy_ is making him feel it.

“Are you going to pick one or not?” he snaps, and hears the faerie sit back in surprise.

“How bold,” the faerie murmurs, and he sounds, of all things, _pleased_. “Just for that, I will not take your comfort from you, little thief. I choose glory.”

It’s a trap, Yuri knows instinctively; he just doesn’t know _how_. “Tell me your name,” he says shakily, and the faerie touches his eyelids.

“Names have power, little thief, but you can call me Viktor, as better thieves have before you,” he says. “Open your eyes, and look at what you’ve stolen.”

 

 

 

When Yuri was very small, the fey would come into the village on full moon nights and the solstice, wearing their glamour like a second skin. Everyone knew what they were, but Yuri was one of the few who could see through the veil to the twisted branches that made up the rowan women’s hands and the unnatural blue of the winter fey’s lips. They were all lovely, but under the glamour their beauty shone like polished gems.

Viktor is not wearing a glamour. He sits with his bare legs curled under him like a child, ragged wings folded behind his back and colored by the setting sun. His face is young and his eyes are blue, and he’s the most beautiful thing Yuri’s ever seen.

“Am I not what you expected?” he asks when Yuri’s stared too long, and laughs when Yuri jerks in surprise. He’s easily amused, this faerie of his, and he knows humans better than most. Yuri wonders how long it’s been since he was last stolen.

“You are more than I expected,” Yuri tells him, heady with the sheer power Viktor represents. He came here hoping for a woodland sprite, and he has caught a creature straight out of the Summer Court. “I waited a long time for you.”

“Yes,” Viktor says, something like hunger flickering over his lovely face. It sets Yuri’s teeth on edge. “May I have my gift?”

Yuri releases his wrist, the contract sealed with Viktor’s choice, and picks up his crowning achievement, his first and only Olympic gold. He’s sorry to see it go, but not as sorry as he would have been had Viktor picked the skates, or his stuffed tiger. He leans close to slide the ribbon over Viktor’s head, and the medal settles over Viktor’s heart like it belongs there.

Viktor touches it with his free hand, eyes speculative. “Glory,” he murmurs again, instead of _pride_. “Is that what you seek, little thief?”

The fey are not genies; they don’t grant wishes. They like games, and puzzles, and this one flew right into the palm of Yuri’s hand and waited for him to close his fist. Viktor has already started playing, and Yuri doesn’t know the rules.

“No,” Yuri says, and lifts his chin. “I seek a companion.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

His cat is not as wary of him tonight, used to fey scent by now. He crawls into bed with Yuri and settles over his chest, purring like a motorboat. Yuri strokes his fingers through his soft fur.

“Congratulate me, Potya,” he whispers, only a little hysterical. His body is still thrumming with adrenaline, and disbelief. “I got married.”

 

 

 

Yuri’s backpack is lighter the next day, free of his skates and the weight of his medal. It makes the walk into the forest easier. The last of the snow melted overnight, and his crutches dig into soft dirt and new grass.

This time, he doesn’t have to sit and wait for the faeries to come. When he makes his way to the faerie ring, there’s a pretty little sprite waiting for him, with bright red hair and a brighter smile.

“You’re here!” she says, and Yuri recognizes her voice.

“You were with me when I was waiting for Viktor,” he says. She tilts her head, inquisitive.

“Viktor,” she repeats with some unfamiliarity, then brightens again. “Of course, Viktor! Yes, I waited for him with you.”

She’s the one who wanted his eyes, Yuri remembers, but it seems less important now, when she’s standing in front of him with bare feet, watching him with innocent, childlike curiosity. In the light of day with his eyes open, she’s too lovely to be frightening.

“Where is he?” Yuri wants to know. Viktor who pressed a kiss to his lips when Yuri demanded to keep him, and said, _you will have what you seek_. Now Yuri is here, and his companion is not.

The sprite shrugs, wriggling her toes into the dirt. “He will come, as he always does,” she promises. “Unless he forgets! In which case, I will go get him for you.”

Yuri processes this. The fey keep their promises, everyone knows, but no one told him they might _forget_. He looks around at the trees and wonders what he’ll do if Viktor doesn’t think of him for another decade.

“You worry too much,” the sprite tells him, delicate dragonfly wings fluttering impatiently. “This is not the way of the Summer Court.”

“I’m not of the Summer Court,” Yuri points out. “If Viktor isn’t here, I’m going home.”

The sprite reaches out to grab his arm. Yuri tries to wrench away from her grip, but she’s unnaturally fast, and very, very strong.

“You stole our King,” she says, and shakes him, hard. Yuri’s breath catches in his throat.

“What?” he says dumbly, and the sprite smiles with a mouth full of needles.

“The King is ours,” she continues as Yuri’s world tilts in front of his eyes. God, he doesn’t know what he was thinking, pretending she wasn’t dangerous just because she’s _pretty_. “And now, you are ours too.”

“I didn’t mean to!” Yuri protests, struggling as much as he can with only one heel to dig into the ground. This isn’t what he wanted. This isn’t what he wanted at _all_. “I didn’t know who he was!”

The sprite laughs, and it is not a lovely sound. “Does it matter?” she asks, derisive. “Come, thief. You will go home when the King comes to collect you. Until then, you are ours to play with.”

 

 

 

There are ten of fey where she takes him, through the faerie ring he’s taken great care never to step into. They crowd around him excitedly, fussing over his jacket and pulling at his hair. They pour sweet wine into his mouth and feed him berries redder than the sprite’s hair, then take his hand.

“Dance with us!” they say, and he leaves his crutches behind and rises to both feet. For the first time in one hundred and forty-one days, Yuri stretches his body into _balerina_ -perfect shapes, and when he pirouettes his legs don’t buckle under him. There’s no pain, only music in the wind and summer in his veins, and faerie after faerie offering their hands for a dance.

The sprite spins under his arm, laughing at his joy. “I am Mila,” she tells him, and Yuri almost blurts out his own name in response. He catches himself just in time, and she laughs again.

“Now I have given you something, thief,” she says. “Remember this when you go back.”

Yuri opens his mouth to reply, but another pair of hands whisks him away and Mila’s shock of red hair is left behind.

 

 

 

Yuri doesn’t know when he fell asleep, but he wakes up to a gentle hand stroking through his hair, and the sound of Viktor’s voice.

“I hope you didn’t break him,” he says, almost amused, but something about it makes the hair rise on the back of Yuri’s neck.

“He’s human,” Mila says, and she sounds as apprehensive as Yuri feels. “He’s just worn out. He was happy; I made sure he had fun.”

Viktor’s hand pauses at the base of Yuri’s neck. “Did you have fun, little thief?” he asks, and Yuri realizes there’s no more use in pretending. He tries to push himself up on arms that feel like jelly, and Viktor laughs.

Yuri shivers; he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to the sound of fey laughter, but.

“I danced,” he says, then again, with wonder. “I _danced_.”

“Yes,” Viktor agrees, and he’s definitely amused now. “With almost every fey in my court, I hear.”

“I danced,” Yuri whispers, the shock of it only just starting to settle in. He danced for so long his body is _aching_ , the way it ached after a good, long practice, the way it hasn’t ached in one hundred and forty-one days.

Viktor hums. “Perhaps next time,” he says. “You will dance with me.”

Yuri looks at him. The gold medal sits at the center of Viktor’s chest, bright in the waning light. There’s nothing on his face that Yuri can read, but he could have sworn he sounds almost jealous.

He’s the Summer King, and Yuri can see it now, in the line of his shoulders and the way he sits with his back straighter than any prima _balerina’s_. He’s fey _royalty_ , and he’s been sitting in the grass with Yuri, waiting for him to wake up.

 _Why did you choose me?_ Yuri wants to demand. “You’re very late,” is what comes out instead, petulant like a child.

Viktor regards him with serious blue eyes. “Can you get up?” he asks. “It’s nearly sundown. I imagine you want to get home.”

Yuri pushes himself up again, this time wobbling only a little. “My leg doesn’t hurt,” he realizes, but Viktor shakes his head.

“It’s only the summer wine,” he says, so quick that Yuri doesn’t even have time to be disappointed. “You danced through the day. Rest your leg tonight, or it will be worse in the morning.”

For all that Viktor had no trouble petting his hair while he was asleep, he keeps a careful distance as Yuri struggles to his knees. It’s Mila who steps forward with his crutches and helps him up, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. Yuri had forgotten she was there. Her bright colors wash out next to the overwhelming intensity that is the Summer King.

When Yuri has his crutches under his arms again, Viktor steps close. He presses a perfunctory kiss to Yuri’s lips, like an afterthought.

“Mila will see you home,” he says. “Goodnight, little thief. Tomorrow is another day.”

 

 

 

“This is as far as I go,” Mila announces at the edge of the treeline. “Unless you need me to go further?”

Yuri adjusts the crutches under his arms, already starting to feel the pain starting to creep up his calf. “I’m good,” he says, because he doesn’t want to owe her any more than he already does.

Mila touches his arm before he can start hobbling his way back into the village. It’s the same arm she grabbed earlier; Yuri imagines he’ll find finger-shaped bruises in the shower.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she says, halting. Yuri stares at her, and she flushes high in her cheeks. “You will come back, won’t you? I didn’t scare you too much?”

 _You scared me plenty_ , Yuri doesn’t say. He doesn’t know why she’s suddenly so anxious, but he’ll bet the rest of his treasures that it has something to do with the conversation she was having with Viktor before he woke up.

“I’m not sure,” he says instead, tamping down the vicious surge of anger. He doesn’t need Viktor protecting him after the fact when he couldn’t bother showing up to stop Mila in the first place.

“Make sure you tell Viktor that too, yeah?” he adds, hobbling away from her wide eyes, crutches digging hard into the dirt. He doesn’t look back.

 

 

 

It’s _weird_ , scrolling through Instagram after the day he’s had. Yuri readjusts the hot water bag under his leg and swipes away the notifications that say _Missed Call, Otabek Altin_ , hitting like on a picture of Chulanont’s hamsters. There’s a short video of Leroy in the middle of a combination spin; free leg tucked under his body. Yuri looks at it and thinks, _I did that today_.

He has to lie down, after that.

 

 

 

Viktor seems to drop from the sky.

Yuri is sitting alone, crutches parked on the grass next to him and book open in his lap, and the next second there’s a warm presence at his side and a bare knee overlapping his. He jumps about a foot into the air, and it makes Viktor smile.

“What are you reading, little thief?” he asks, peering over Yuri’s shoulder. Like this, he’s not much taller than Yuri. All Yuri has to do is turn his head and he can meet Viktor’s unnaturally blue eyes.

“No minions today?” Yuri asks, dry, and turns the page. His phone doesn’t get a signal out here, and dies within five minutes no matter how much charge it has. He figured it had something to do with the fey on day one hundred and twenty-eight, and bought all the books and comics he’d been putting off reading due to lack of time.

He has all the time in the world, now.

“You didn’t seem to approve of them,” Viktor tells him, distracted. Yuri pulls the book away from his creeping fingers.

“My leg hurt like a bitch this morning,” he says. “Resting it didn’t help. You lied.”

“We don’t lie,” Viktor says immediately, disdainfully. “That is a human affliction.”

Yuri rolls his eyes so hard it’s a miracle they don’t fall out of his head. “Your minions are responsible,” he says. “And so are you, because you weren’t _here_.”

Viktor blinks, finally paying attention. “My fey are not used to being—limited,” he says after a moment. “I can’t always be available to you. You wanted companionship. I tried to make sure you wouldn’t be alone.”

It’s a surprisingly thoughtful gesture, in hindsight. The Summer King came to him in person because Yuri asked. The stipulations of the contract slung around Viktor’s neck doesn’t make it any less incredible. Yuri flushes, pleased despite himself.

“What are we doing today?” he asks, trying and failing not to sound too eager. “More dancing?”

Viktor lies down on the grass on his belly and puts his chin in his hands. His hair spills all around him; it will be full of twigs when he gets up, but he doesn’t seem to care. It’s hard to think of him as a king when he’s looking up at Yuri like that, legs kicking the air like a little boy’s.

“I don’t read your language,” he says, and pulls the book from Yuri’s lap onto the ground where he can see it. “Read it to me.”

Yuri puffs up indignantly. “Did no one ever teach you _manners?_ ” he wants to know, because his grandfather would never have tolerated such impudence in his home. It’s a bit of a revelation. Viktor the Summer King is demanding and _petulant_ , and Yuri kind of wants to punch him in his perfect face.

Viktor smiles at him, undeterred. “Read to me,” he says again, sweeter now, coaxing. “I like the sound of your voice.”

Yuri opens his mouth, then closes it. The full force of Viktor’s attention is a heady thing; it drains his anger and makes the blood rush in his ears. He thinks if Viktor really wanted, he could make Yuri forget his name with just that smile.

“Okay,” he says finally, and clears his throat. “I’ll start at the beginning, for you.”

 

 

 

Viktor falls asleep listening to Yuri read Harry Potter out loud, halfway through chapter seven. Yuri didn’t know faeries slept, but Viktor is out cold, head pillowed on his arms and body curled towards Yuri.

“Right,” Yuri says to himself, and takes a deep breath. He dog-ears the page and puts the book away, because he’s read it before and Viktor might want to know what happens next. Viktor’s pale hair is everywhere, some of it pooling under Yuri’s knees. It looks very soft.

Yuri pulls out a different book from his backpack, and turns his attention elsewhere.

 

 

 

To his immense relief, there’s no Viktor the next day, only Mila. She takes his hand, gentle with anxiousness, and pulls him into the revelry. A rowan fey who asks to be called Zhora spins him from Mila’s arms and tosses him into the air, and Yuri laughs helplessly, drunk on music and summer wine. He dances until his feet are sore and his belly is warm and full, and just when he thinks he’ll collapse, Viktor comes to collect him and send him home with a kiss.

It’s painless, and perfect. It’s the only thing he ever wants to do.

 

 

 

On day one hundred and sixty-eight, Yuri’s grandfather sits him down at the dinner table and carefully asks him what he’s been doing with his time.

“Reading, mostly,” Yuri says, which isn’t even a lie. He’s gone through most of his comics by now, waiting for Mila or Zhora to show up and escort him to the revelry. Occasionally it’s Viktor who’s there instead, but he doesn’t take Yuri to dance; instead they sit together under the trees and Viktor annoys Yuri into reading Harry Potter to him. Those days should feel like a waste, but sometimes Viktor puts his hand on Yuri’s bad leg and feeds him pieces of sunshine, soothing the pain better than any of Yuri’s pills.

“You’ve been going into the forest on your own,” his grandfather says, and Yuri wonders who told him. The villagers have started keeping their distance again, but Yuri can’t bring himself to care.

“You said it yourself, dedulya,” he points out. “There hasn’t been a sighting in years. It’s quiet out there. I like it.”

His grandfather’s eyes are concerned. Yuri feels a glimmer of guilt, but it’s overwhelmed by his eagerness for tomorrow to come sooner.

“You have not made any friends since you came here, Yurotchka,” his grandfather says, putting a wrinkled hand over Yuri’s. “You don’t speak to anyone. Maybe it was not a good idea to bring you. Maybe you would have been better off in St. Petersburg after all, with your friends and the good doctors and therapists.”

“I’m fine, dedulya,” Yuri says, because he is. “I still talk to Yuko,” even though he stopped telling her anything important a month ago, “and I just need some space from my friends right now. They’re all skaters, you know.”

This is a lie. Yuri’s only real friend is Otabek, and Yuri texts him back every other day, just so he knows Yuri is still alive. The skating doesn’t bother him quite so much, now that he can dance again.

There’s a small part of him that thinks of Mila, too, who has learned to chatter at him for ages while they wait for Viktor to show up and kiss Yuri goodnight. But he can’t mention her to his grandfather, ever.

“Maybe you could come out on the boat with me, now that you can walk more freely,” his grandfather says, glancing at the cane Yuri graduated to on day one hundred and fifty-six. The way he’s progressing, the physiotherapist they drove to in the city told them, in another few months he might be able to walk on his own! It’s almost unbelievable, she said, eyes bright with wonder, and Yuri thought of the summer wine in his veins and Viktor’s magic thrumming under his skin, steadying his legs and giving him strength.

“Don’t worry, dedulya,” he says, spearing a piece of meat on his fork. It tastes strange on his tongue now, like it has for a while. Nothing he eats outside the forest is sweet enough. “Just give me a little more time, and I’ll be just fine.”

 

 

 

That night, he goes up to his room and sends Otabek _three_ texts, just to make a point. Then he climbs into his too-soft bed with his cat and his stuffed tiger, and scrolls through his Instagram feed until he falls asleep.

He dreams of flowers, and needle-sharp teeth, and dancing.

 

 

 

“Are you going to stay up there all day?” Yuri calls up to where Viktor is sitting comfortably in the branches of a tall tree, braiding summer flowers into his hair. Viktor doesn’t respond, which is infuriating for a number of reasons, but Yuri doesn’t have the patience to deal with him today. Otabek hasn’t texted him in forty-eight hours, and Yuri is well on his way past dismay into cold fury. He even brought his phone with him today, even though there’s no chance he’ll receive a message out here.

“Hey, Viktor,” he says when they’ve sat quietly together for a while, Yuri reading and Viktor occasionally dropping flowers like reminders. “What do you do when you don’t come here?”

Viktor hums above his head. He’s making it clear that he doesn’t want to be here today, and even clearer that Yuri is to blame, even though he could have just sent Mila instead. He can be such a _child_. “Boring things,” he says, and drops a purple blossom in Yuri’s lap.

“What,” Yuri scoffs, brushing the petals off his jeans. “Being a king is boring?”

Another flower falls from the branches, this time on his head. Yuri swipes at it, annoyed, and Viktor laughs.

“Everything is boring in the summer, little thief,” he says. “Would you like to see?”

His phone is still and silent in his pocket. Yuri shouldn’t say yes, but he does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Court fey are still impatient, and endlessly curious. They touch Yuri’s hair and his clothes, murmuring amongst themselves in a language Yuri doesn’t understand. They part for Viktor like the Red Sea but edge towards Yuri, trying to trip him and mimicking his hobble. Yuri drops one crutch and curls his fingers into the fine slip of cloth Viktor wears draped over his body like morning dew, sacrificing stability for safety.

Mila appears at his side like magic, fending off the boldest of them with a blue-eyed glare and picking up the crutch for him. “Viktor, pay attention,” she says, and Viktor blinks in surprise, like he didn’t notice.

“Of course,” he says, and directs a blindingly beautiful smile towards his fey. “You’re not bothering my prince, are you?”

“No, no,” the fey titter immediately, scurrying back to give Yuri a respectful berth. Whatever it is about Viktor that sets Yuri’s teeth on edge is apparently not limited to humans.

Mila says something else, in the foreign fey tongue that Yuri can’t track. Viktor replies, and then Mila is pulling Yuri away from him, hand curled in the crook of his elbow.

“You will be terribly bored today,” she tells him. “You should have chosen to dance again, but now you get to sit with me and watch your husband work.”

 _Husband_ , Yuri thinks, watching Viktor merge into a group of Court fey, all beautiful and regal, not one as lovely as him. He hasn’t allowed himself to think of Viktor that way. Faerie brides are such impermanent things, bound by contract and magic instead of choice.

 

 

 

It _is_ impossibly boring, for a while. Viktor talks to other Court fey in their own tongue, arguing in steely tones until they bow before him, or storm away. “They’re his advisors,” Mila says when Yuri asks, sitting next to him in the grass and thumbing through his comics. “What,” she laughs at his wide eyes. “Did you imagine being king was easy?”

Yuri can’t say he imagined anything at all. He watches as Viktor unravels the elaborate braid he spent half an hour plaiting in visible frustration and thinks it’s really very funny, that a creature like Viktor can be defeated by something as mundane as _politics_.

 

 

 

They dance, after, like they always do, and for the first time since they met Yuri looks around for Viktor in the mass of lovely faces and lovely bodies. He’s not there. Yuri doesn’t remember him ever being there, but when the revelry is done he appears like he always does to kiss Yuri goodbye.

Yuri keeps his eyes open as their lips meet and thinks, _where do you go?_

 

 

 

“I don’t know,” Mila says, blinking up at Yuri from where she’s sprawled in the grass, exhausted from the revelry. “He spends time with Makkachin, I think, and sometimes he goes to tend to the weakest trees.”

“Maybe he visits the Winter King,” Zhora says darkly, pulling a flower from the ground to put behind his ear. Mila shrugs at him.

“Maybe,” she says. “He doesn’t always tell us.”

“He’s your king,” Yuri says, going through the cooldown stretches that make the summer fey smile. He lowers his body into a half-split, out of practice, and puts his fingers to the ground. “How do you not know?”

“Our Court has been at peace for a long time,” Mila tells him. “The King chases away the winter, and we bring warmth to the trees and help the flowers bloom. Aside from his duties, the King does what he wants.”

“I thought all faeries love to dance,” Yuri says, and Zhora laughs.

“All summer fey love to dance,” he corrects, weaving more flowers into his daisy chain. “And most dark fey. Viktor just—doesn’t have anyone to dance with, I suppose. Not in the summer. He is our King, and we are his fey.”

Yuri remembers the summer fey stepping away from Viktor’s touch instead of swarming towards his warmth, and the way Viktor always leans too close until he catches himself and pulls away. Fey are tactile creatures, but Viktor doesn’t seem to touch anyone but Yuri. None of his fey knows where he goes when he’s not with them, and they don’t seem to care.

Yuri never thought being a king could be lonely.

“Don’t worry, husband of our King,” Zhora says formally, dropping the daisy chain over Yuri’s head. “Worrying is not the way of the Summer Court. Summer is at its strongest when its fey are happy, and you are among the summer fey, now.”

“Happy,” Yuri says, touching the flowers around his neck. He stretches his legs out in front of him and touches his toes. There’s no pain, only the warmth of wine and sun. “I can do that.”

 

 

 

Potya is used to being left alone for long periods of time, but he’s extra cuddly nowadays, like he used to be when Yuri just returned from a competition. He meows at Yuri until he pushes away his laptop and makes space in his lap.

“Do you think I’m happy, Potya?” Yuri asks, ruffling his fur.

Potya yawns. Yuri pulls out his phone and brings up his conversation with Otabek. The last message is from him, a simple, _still at grandpa’s_ , then nothing for days.

Loneliness, Yuri can understand.

 

 

 

Summer peaks, slowly. April turns into May, and Yuri forgets to call Otabek and ignores his grandfather’s concerned eyes. He dances in the forest, and his skates gain dust under the bed. Viktor brings him to Court more often, Zhora explains the workings of Summer, and Mila teaches him the fey tongue.

Home is lonely. It’s too cold. The meat is bad, the fish tolerable, the fruits never sweet enough. Yuri catches himself dreaming of living like the summer fey, and it’s not as frightening as it once was.

 

 

 

Once upon a time, Yuri wanted change. It comes for him on day one hundred and eighty-four.

 

 

 

This faerie is not of the Summer Court. He doesn’t wear Yuri’s medal around his neck, and he’s standing in Yuri’s _home_ , unbothered by the wind chimes at his window or the iron lining the floor.

“Don’t be afraid,” the faerie says. “I only wanted to meet you.”

There must be something wrong with him, Yuri realizes dimly, because he _isn’t_ afraid. This faerie is not like Viktor, who wears his beauty like a sword and even after all this time makes Yuri shiver when he laughs. This is a winter fey, with blue-tinged lips, face and body round under his heavy coat. His smile isn’t inviting, like Viktor’s, only warm.

He has no wings.

“Who are you?” Yuri demands. The steel of his chain burns against his throat.

The faerie looks at him with beautiful dark eyes, considering. “I am of the Winter Court,” he says, which doesn’t tell Yuri anything at all. “And you are the thief who stole the Summer King.”

 _Now_ Yuri is afraid. “I’m not part of your fey politics,” he says, pushing his back against the wall like it can protect him when the iron didn’t. “What you want with the Summer King is not my business.”

The faerie’s eyes widen; Yuri’s breath mists in front of his face. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, earnest like Yuri has never seen from the fey. “I only wanted to see the husband Summer has chosen.”

“Summer didn’t choose me,” Yuri snaps, confused and afraid and longing for his summer fey. The room is too cold. “Viktor did, so you can go blame him and leave me _alone_.”

The faerie smiles, just a tiny thing, but it makes Yuri’s stomach unwind. It’s been a while since he was so startled by fey beauty.

“Look at that temper,” the faerie marvels quietly. “No wonder Viktor tries so hard to hide you away. Summer will be so strong, when you are fully his.”

That makes no sense whatsoever, and Yuri tells him so. The faerie laughs. It’s almost a human sound.

“Careful, golden prince,” he says, and stands. “Viktor has use for you, and he’s never had any patience for rules. But not all of us are of his Court, and you should remember what you have learned in your home full of iron and cloves.”

Yuri shuts his mouth, because the faerie isn’t wrong. The number of rules he’s broken would send his grandfather to an early grave if he knew.

The faerie looks at him with kind eyes. His booted feet leave frost on the floorboards, but he doesn’t seem cold, in his fur-trimmed coat.

“I know what it’s like to be caught in Viktor’s world, golden prince,” he says. “I know the taste of summer wine and the revelry that makes you want to stay forever. If you choose to stay, make sure it’s because you chose, and not because you forgot.”

“Are you telling me not to trust Viktor?” Yuri demands, so angry he forgets the warning that made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. “You’re the one threatening me in my _home_ , where I didn’t invite you.”

“I am telling you not to trust the _fey_ , golden prince,” the faerie says, unbothered by Yuri’s rage. “We have our rules, and our games. We will never do you any favors, no matter how many gilded collars you put around our necks.”

It’s not a collar, Yuri thinks, sickened. Viktor _chose_ it, instead of the toy he could have hidden away, or the skates he could have put on his feet.

“You’re a faerie, too,” he says. At least Viktor has the decency to wear his danger on his skin, instead of hiding it in earnest smiles and helpful threats. “I don’t trust you.”

The faerie laughs again. It doesn’t make Yuri’s skin crawl, which only makes it more treacherous.

“Viktor has never been human, golden prince,” the faerie says, stepping towards the window. Yuri slides out of his way. “Remember that.”

“Neither have you!” Yuri shouts after him, but he’s already gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What kind of faerie can come into a human home uninvited?” Yuri demands, cane gripped in a white-knuckled fist. “What kind of faerie is unaffected by iron and salt?”

Mila exchanges a wary glance with Zhora, and their pretty smiles slip.

“Don’t you dare lie to me!” Yuri shouts at them. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’s aware that he should not be able to shout at the fey, but he doesn’t care. “He came into my _grandfather’s home!_ ”

“A monarch could,” Viktor’s voice comes from behind him, coolly detached. Mila and Zhora scramble to their feet. “But I don’t remember going to your home, little thief.”

Yuri whirls around to face him. His medal hangs around Viktor’s neck, the only thing he wears that has any weight or shine. _Gilded collar_ , Yuri remembers the winter fey saying, and has to swallow down bile.

“Then the Winter King was in my house,” he says, fear bubbling up his throat. “Why would the Winter King be interested in _me?_ ”

Viktor’s eyes narrow, and Zhora makes a soft noise behind them. “There was no bread at his door last night,” he tells Viktor quietly. “We thought the dark fey had come first.”

“You stake out my _house?_ ” Yuri blinks, momentarily deterred. He shakes his head, and turns back to Viktor.

“I want to talk to you alone,” he says.

“Was that a request, little thief?” Viktor asks. The amused tilt of his head is the most infuriating thing Yuri’s ever seen.

“The Winter King called me _prince_ ,” he says through gritted teeth. “I am your _husband_ , and I want to talk to you _alone_.”

Viktor looks at him for a long moment, unmoving. Then he nods, and Yuri knows without looking that Zhora and Mila are gone. Viktor folds himself onto the grass and blinks up at Yuri with guileless blue eyes.

Yuri doesn’t sit. Like this, with his wings half-hidden behind him, Viktor could almost be human.

“He told me not to trust you,” Yuri says. “He sounded like he was trying to help me.”

Viktor’s lips twitch upwards, and with the other King so fresh in Yuri’s mind it’s suddenly so easy to see the difference. The Winter King smiled because he wanted to; Viktor smiles because it makes him too beautiful to deny.

“Do you trust him, then?” he asks, and Yuri bristles.

“I don’t trust _any_ of you,” he says, even though just yesterday he fell asleep with his head in Mila’s lap, and the steel cane his grandfather bought him lies untouched under his bed. “I don’t know what you _want_ from me!”

Viktor’s face remains unchanged, but his wings rustle restlessly at his back. “You could ask,” he says.

Yuri stares at him. “It can’t be that easy,” he says, and Viktor shrugs.

“Maybe,” he says. “But you could try.”

There are rules about demanding answers from the fey, who never lie, but never speak the truth, either. Yuri has, so far, sought out the fey, stared at them, been rude to them, and purposefully attracted their attention. The Winter King said, _Viktor’s never had any patience for rules_.

“Did you choose me?” he asks. Viktor curls his knees to his chest.

“No,” he says.

Yuri bites his lip, and tosses his cane to the ground. He lowers himself carefully to the grass, stretching his bad leg towards Viktor, and Viktor automatically puts a hand on his calf. Yuri watches him pour sunlight into his skin with eyes gone heavy from pleasure.

“I need to ask the right questions,” he muses, half to himself. Viktor keeps on smiling, but his wings are more honest. They spread open once, then close.

“Okay,” Yuri says. “You need something from me, but you’re not allowed to tell me what it is.”

It’s not really a question, but Viktor’s wings open again, only for a moment. They’re incandescent in the light, and Yuri swallows, hard.

“Was the Winter King human, before?” he blurts. Viktor pauses, then takes his hand away from Yuri’s leg.

“The Winter King,” he says, sounding the words out with some unfamiliarity. “Never wanted to be fey. He was afraid of our kind, like you have never been.”

“That’s not true,” Yuri protests, because even now fey laughter makes his skin crawl.

Viktor doesn’t reply, but his smile grows sharp and unfriendly. For all that he lies with everything but his words, he doesn’t like dishonesty, in his fey or in Yuri. He doesn’t like a lot of things that are human.

“If he didn’t want to be fey, how did he become fey?” Yuri asks, mostly to divert Viktor’s attention.

It works. Viktor shrugs at him. “Winter chose him,” he says, and Yuri’s throat goes dry.

Last night, the Winter King told Yuri that _Summer_ chose him, and warned him about staying in Viktor’s Court.

Something of his panic must show in his face, because Viktor reaches out to touch his cheek, gentle like he rarely is. Yuri flinches back, and Viktor withdraws, eyes inscrutable.

“I wouldn’t hurt you, little thief,” he says. He’s never used the word _husband_ either. “You came to my Court, and danced with my fey. I tried to keep you from it, but you kept coming back.”

Viktor, who didn’t take him to the revelry, and sat with him to read human books instead. Viktor who sent his faeries to keep Yuri company when he was busy, and didn’t take kindly to them treating Yuri poorly. Yuri has enough of the pieces of the puzzle now, but he doesn’t want to add them up for fear of what he’ll see.

Viktor was wrong. Yuri _is_ afraid.

“What if I don’t want to be part of your Court?” he challenges. “What if I never want to see you again?”

“You put your glory around my neck,” Viktor says, and touches the medal on his chest. “You can choose to go away, but you ate our food and drank our wine. Summer runs through your veins, now. You can choose to go away, but you will never be human again.”

Yuri stumbles to his feet, cane gripped in one hand. Viktor doesn’t try to help him.

“I never wanted to be a prince,” he says shakily. “I only wanted to skate again.”

“You wanted to be _healed_ ,” Viktor spits, suddenly furious. He leans forward with both hands on the ground, wings flaring behind him, thin and beautiful and shivering in the wind. “You lied about what you wanted, then you lied about what you were willing to pay. Humans always forget that there’s a price for lying, too.”

It’s a clear day, not a cloud in the sky, but Yuri hears thunder rumble in the distance. He stands rooted to the ground, caught between awe and terror. Viktor rises to his feet.

“I will not chase you,” he says, gathering his dignity to him like the glamour he never wears. “And I will not exact the price for your questions. But this is all I can offer. Don’t come back again, little thief, until you know what you want.”

“I know what I don’t want,” Yuri summons enough courage to say, and flees.

 

 

 


	2. Act II

 

 

The first time Yuri does not go back to the forest is day one hundred and eighty-five. It storms that night, thunder crashing overhead and lightning flashing across the sky. Potya hides under the bed and Yuri ducks under the covers, clutching his stuffed tiger with one hand and his steel chain with the other.

When he checks the next day, the bread outside their door is soaked through.

 

 

 

It rains for three nights. The river floods, and Yuri’s grandfather stops going out. It provides a better incentive for Yuri to not go running back to the Summer Court with his tail between his legs.

There’s not much to do now that he isn’t spending his time with the fey. Yuri scrolls through his Instagram feed, looks through already-read comic books, and jerks off out of sheer boredom. It feels weird thinking of Otabek anymore, and he hasn’t been terribly interested in anyone else in a long time, so he tries to keep his fantasies limited to faceless body parts, hockey player shoulders and figure skater abs.

Which is probably why he doesn’t really notice when the images in his mind turn to long brown legs under smooth, sheer silk, but then there’s a flash of color at the edge of his vision that he’s only ever seen on a faerie king’s wings.

Yuri comes all over his fist and thinks, _fuck_.

 

 

 

“I know I haven’t been a good friend lately,” he tells Otabek’s voicemail on day one hundred and eighty-nine. “But I got tickets to Toronto, and I’ll have a visa by the end of the week.”

 

 

 

Otabek doesn’t reply, but when Yuri clears immigration he’s waiting at baggage claim, Yuri’s suitcase already off the carousel and by his side. He’s cut his hair again; it’s shorter at the top than Yuri’s used to seeing. It looks—different.

“Hi,” Yuri says. Otabek’s eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses; Yuri can’t tell if he’s looking at him or his cane.

“Did you book a hotel?” Otabek asks.

“Yeah,” Yuri says, and doesn’t mention that he wasn’t sure he’d be welcome.

“Cancel the reservation,” Otabek says, and starts to walk, pulling Yuri’s suitcase behind him. “You’re staying with me.”

“Okay,” Yuri says, and something about that makes Otabek pause and turn around. He hesitates, then pushes his sunglasses up to his forehead. His eyes are focused on Yuri’s face.

“You look good,” he says. “I’m glad.”

Yuri doesn’t really know how he looked the last time they spoke, weeks and weeks ago, but he remembers how he felt. He guesses it must be an improvement.

“Whatever,” he huffs quietly. “Are we going, or what?”

 

 

 

Toronto is a busy city. It doesn’t quite feel like summer here, with the sun blocked out by tall skyscrapers and not enough trees around. Yuri follows Otabek onto the elevator of his apartment and feels claustrophobic as the doors close.

They stand next to each other on the ride up like strangers and don’t talk.

Otabek’s cat used to like Yuri, but now she hisses at him and darts out of the room the moment he steps in. Otabek looks surprised; Yuri doesn’t tell him she can probably smell the fey on his skin. He’s never been to Otabek’s apartment in Toronto before. Otabek visited him in St. Petersburg, and Yuri’s visited him and his family in Kazakhstan, but aside from that, they’ve only spent time together in ice rinks and hotel rooms.

“Nice place,” he offers, glancing around. Otabek shrugs, tossing his sunglasses on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“It’s smaller than your apartment,” he says. Yuri winces.

“I don’t have that anymore,” he says. “Didn’t think I’d be going back to St. Petersburg anytime soon, so.”

“Oh,” Otabek says, and falls silent. It’s _awkward_. Yuri doesn’t know what to do. He feels like he should apologize, but that’s not really within the purview of their—relationship, or whatever it is they have. Had. This is uncharted territory.

“Look,” Yuri starts, faltering. “I was an ass, I know. I can really go to a hotel. It’s no problem. We can—build back up to this, or something.”

Otabek looks at him with serious dark eyes. “I’m going to put your stuff in the spare bedroom,” he says. “We can start by being roommates.”

“I’m only here for three weeks,” Yuri protests, and Otabek finally smiles. It makes him look eighteen again, like he was when they met.

“You can be here longer, if you want,” he says, and wheels Yuri’s suitcase down the hall.

 

 

 

Yuri tosses and turns in the too-soft bed in Otabek’s spare room. Misha likes to sleep in her cat bed on top of the refrigerator, unlike Potya, who flops all over Yuri and smacks him in the face with his tail. The apartment is temperature-controlled; Yuri can’t hear anything through the closed window. Even if he opened it, he’d probably only hear cars drive by on the street. It’s a city; there aren’t any cicadas here.

Yuri grew up in impersonal hotel rooms and the bustle of St. Petersburg. He shouldn’t miss sleeping in a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere, and yet.

It’ll wear off, Yuri tells himself. If it doesn’t, he’ll buy sleeping pills. When he was a skater, he used those all the time.

 

 

 

“Do you want to come down to the rink with me?” Otabek asks on day two hundred. He’s like Viktor in the strangest of ways; they both make Yuri say yes to things he shouldn’t.

 

 

 

The smell of the ice hits him first, clean and sharp. Yuri teeters on his good leg, cane gripped in a white-knuckled fist. It’s always so _bright_ in the rink. He’d forgotten.

“Tell me if you want to go,” Otabek says next to him, hoisting the duffel higher on his shoulder. “Or if you want to go somewhere else.”

Slowly, it gets quieter. The other skaters are staring, falling silent one by one as they notice him. Otabek says something else, but Yuri doesn’t hear him over the blood rushing in his ears. There are phones pointed at him now, snapping photos and videos, probably hoping for some sort of a meltdown from the infamous Ice Tiger of Russia. Yuri wonders if he looks as frightened as he did when the summer fey crowded around him, poking and prodding at the funny human cowering among them.

“Yura?” Otabek’s voice breaks through the haze. His brows are furrowed in concern. “I’m telling Lou I’m taking the day off.”

“No,” Yuri says, and it comes out sharper than he meant. “I’m fine.”

Otabek glances at him out of the corner of his eyes and doesn’t argue. “Okay,” he says. “Come on; I want you to take a look at my choreography.”

Yuri is tempted to take the out. The skaters are being shouted into submission by their respective coaches; conversation resumes around them, along with the sound of blades slicing through the ice.

“No, you go ahead,” he says. “You’ve been working on the loop, right? I want to see it.”

Otabek pauses, caught between their practiced dynamic and the knowledge that Yuri’s lying through his teeth. “You don’t have to force yourself to be here,” he tries. It’s the worst thing he could possibly have said.

“Don’t tell me what I want!” Yuri spits at him, body drawn so tight he thinks he’ll snap. This is all the courage he has, and he needs Otabek to stop _pushing_. “I said I’m _fine_. Put on your skates and get on the fucking ice!”

Otabek backs off and goes, but not without a concerned glance that leaves Yuri feeling like he did at the very beginning of their friendship all over again, when he was fifteen and Otabek was his only friend, and he kept thinking he should be _nicer_.

It’s fine. He’s _fine_. He hobbles to the benches and sits, leaning his cane against the far wall. People are still staring, but people have been staring at him since he was thirteen and broke his first paparazzi camera. Yuri tries so hard not to pay attention to them he doesn’t notice Otabek’s coach taking a seat on the same bench until she’s separated him from his cane.

“Hi, Yuri,” Lou says, smiling at him. “How have you been? It’s been a long time.”

Yuri can’t walk without his cane. His grandfather always made sure it was within his reach, and even the fey, careless and inconsiderate on the best of days, never kept either his crutches or his cane from him. The resentment that bubbles up in his belly is so overwhelming Yuri wants to scream.

“I’m okay,” he manages after a moment, aiming for polite and falling short. “And you?”

Lou keeps on smiling, probably chalking it up to Yuri’s personality in general. “Better, now that Beka’s seen you with his own two eyes,” she says. “He’s been so worried. Didn’t say a word, of course, but you could see it in his skating.”

“Oh,” Yuri says, wrongfooted. “I didn’t mean to make him worry.”

“I know,” Lou says kindly. Her face is so young Yuri always has trouble thinking of her as a coach, even more so as _Otabek’s_ coach. Otabek has too many old man wrinkles on his forehead already. “You needed space. I get it.”

Yuri looks out towards the rink. One of the girls flubs a triple-triple combo, landing hard on the ice, and he nearly has a heart attack until she gets up again, shaking it off with a laugh. They’re so stupid, he thinks. They don’t realize that every fall could be their last.

“So how’s the leg?” Lou asks. “It’s really great to see you walking.”

She might have accompanied Otabek to see him in the hospital during the seventeen days Yuri doesn’t remember. He would have been in a wheelchair then, if he was even out of bed at that point.

“It doesn’t hurt as much,” Yuri tells her. The worst of it is past, enough for him to limp with some support, but he won’t ever be completely pain-free. That’s not a promise the fey ever made. Whatever relief they offered was always going to be temporary, just like them. “Physiotherapist thinks I can get rid of the cane in a couple more months.”

Lou hums, pleased. “That sounds good,” she says.

Yuri doesn’t reply. Otabek is clacking towards the rink, as inelegant in his skate guards as he always is. He glances towards the benches and raises his eyebrows at his coach sitting with Yuri, but doesn’t come towards them. His skate guards go on top of the boards, and he glides onto the ice.

Yuri takes a deep breath and braces himself, but there’s—nothing. All he still cares for is his stupid cane.

Lou is watching him carefully. “You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Yuri says weakly, shaken by the strength of his relief. Nothing is good. Nothing is—it’s so much better than he expected. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

 

 

 

Lou shouts at Otabek to fix his damn free leg, and stands. “Gotta get back to work, kid,” she says, reaching out to ruffle his hair. Yuri tries to duck, but without his cane he can’t get very far. “Hey, glad you’re doing good. I have to say, I thought this would go differently.”

Yuri’s temper is notorious, and for all her pretty concern, Lou has never really approved of his relationship with Otabek. She probably thought he would get jealous and bitter and sabotage her skater somehow.

“Me too,” Yuri mutters, watching her walk away. The moment she’s far enough he grabs his cane, and clamps it between his thighs where it’ll be safe.

 

 

 

The pictures of him in Otabek’s rink go viral. It’s the first time anyone’s seen Yuri in public since he left St. Petersburg. Yuri ignores all the speculations and questions and nasty comments, and steals Otabek’s sunglasses to wear outside.

 

 

 

Back at Otabek’s apartment, Yuri instinctively stretches his leg towards Otabek when they settle on the couch to watch Netflix and eat pizza. Otabek looks from the leg to Yuri’s face and asks, “Did you want a massage?”

Yuri’s cheeks heat up, mortified. “No,” he says, but Otabek uses both hands to lift Yuri’s foot into his lap.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he says, and digs his fingers into the arch of Yuri’s foot. It’s no summer wine or fey magic, but it still feels pretty damn good, so Yuri stuffs pizza into his mouth and stares resolutely at the TV. Out of the corner of his eyes, he catches Otabek smiling.

It makes something near-forgotten flutter in his stomach like faerie wings.

 

 

 

The weather forecast says sunny skies, but it storms through the night. Yuri can hear it even through the closed window. His news feed is full of reports of unusual weather throughout Asia, unexpected floods and storms, droughts rolling through Africa and South America.

Yuri resolutely closes out of the apps. Viktor and fucking _Summer_ can throw all the tantrums they want; Yuri isn’t going back to their Court.

 

 

 

Leroy texts, _you’re in toronto!!! brunch tomorrow?_

Yuri replies, _what makes you think i want to see your face_

Leroy replies, _see you at 12. beka knows where_.

 

 

 

Yuri can’t climb onto Otabek’s bike. The rink was close enough for him to walk to, but the diner they’re supposed to meet JJ at in fifteen minutes isn’t.

Otabek swings his head between Yuri and his bike, but thankfully keeps his mouth shut. Yuri doesn’t think his pride could handle being lifted onto the bike and then having to ride fucking _side-saddle_.

“I’ll call an Uber,” Otabek says, and Yuri goes lightheaded with relief.

 

 

 

Leroy and his fiancée are already there by the time Yuri and Otabek climb out of the Uber. Yuri looks at the steps leading up to the door of the fancy hipster diner, no elevator or ramp in sight, and wants to cry. Uneven ground he’s learned to handle, but stairs have been his worst enemy for two hundred and three days.

Otabek’s mouth turns down in apology. “Yura, I am so sorry,” he says. “We can go somewhere else.”

Somewhere else, which will probably require yet another Uber ride because Yuri can’t walk very far or very fast. JJ and Isabella have already been waiting for ten minutes.

“No,” Yuri says, and swallows. “It’s fine.”

Otabek hovers as Yuri painstakingly climbs the stairs with one hand braced against the wall, the other digging his cane so hard into the concrete that it shakes. It’s a humiliating experience, especially since Before Yuri might have let Otabek sling him over one shoulder and carry him up, protesting all the way. Now, the only saving grace of the whole ordeal is that Leroy doesn’t see him through the window.

Otabek holds the door open for him. He’d do it for anyone, but to Yuri, out of breath and red with mortification, even that feels like a slight.

“Thanks,” Yuri manages through his teeth, and limps through.

“Plisetsky!” Leroy calls from where he’s seated at, thank fuck, a booth, instead of the tall chairs surrounding the bar. He bounds up and throws his arms around Yuri before anyone can stop him. “Look at you! For a while there I thought you really did throw yourself off a bridge!”

Otabek glances sharply at Yuri. “A bridge?” he asks, pointed.

Yuri shoves Leroy off him and takes a seat in the chair opposite the table instead of sliding into the booth. “That was you, not me,” he snaps, annoyed, and Otabek relaxes.

“It’s good to see you, Yuri,” Isabella says after she’s kissed Otabek hello. She reaches out to take his hand, and Yuri lets himself smile back at her. She’s pretty cool, once he takes Leroy out of the equation.

“Hi, Izzy,” he says. “Are you still sure you want to marry this loser?”

She laughs, and it’s strange to hear a pretty laugh that doesn’t make him flinch. Yuri smiles wider and relaxes, cane secure between his and Otabek’s chairs and surrounded by—humans.

 

 

 

Leroy’s burger is basically bloody, and Otabek’s smells like burned meat. Yuri puts a piece of bacon in his mouth and nearly throws up.

“Something wrong with the food?” Isabella asks, fork paused over her waffles. Yuri shakes his head, but his stomach roils with the smell of meat in a way it definitely didn’t over cheese pizza.

He waves the server over. “Could I get the fruit salad?” he says, and Leroy snorts.

“It’s the off-season, Plisetsky, take a load off with the rest of us,” he says. “Not like you have to watch your calories anymore.”

He catches himself a bit too late, and by then everyone’s gone quiet. Isabella puts down her fork.

“Jean-Jacques,” she says icily, but Leroy’s already talking, eyes big and hands spread wide.

“Shit, Yuri,” he says. “I didn’t mean that."

The two bites of egg Yuri took sit cold in his stomach. He should probably be mad. Two hundred and three days ago a comment like that would have gotten Leroy punched.

“It’s fine,” he manages eventually, too late to be convincing but not quite a lie. It’s not like Leroy’s wrong. Yuri doesn’t have to care about his weight anymore. He’s never going to do a quad again, even if the summer wine could let him dance. He’s never going to win another gold medal. Leroy and Otabek will take them all.

Yuri’s mind flashes to the one Olympic gold he had, that he gave away. It flashes, infuriatingly, to _Viktor_.

“Yura,” Otabek starts, and Isabella adds, “It’s not fine, Yuri.”

“It is,” Yuri tells them, and it’s like a knot he didn’t know was weighing down his chest for two hundred and three days finally unwinds. “Really. Besides, who cares about beating old men like you?”

“Hey!” Leroy says, affronted. Otabek wrinkles his nose.

“Are you saying I’m old?” he asks.

Yuri grins at him, and it could almost be real. “I call ‘em like I see ‘em, Beka,” he says. Isabella, the second-youngest person at the table, starts to laugh again.

Yuri catches himself wondering if she’d get along with Mila, then has to forcibly stop that train of thought. His salad arrives, red strawberries and green kale drizzled with just the right amount of dressing. He takes a big bite, eager to smell something other than burnt and raw meat.

It’s not sweet enough.

 

 

 

Leroy stops in front of him when they stand up to leave. Isabella catches her fiancé’s eye and takes Otabek’s arm to pull him to the door, chattering away about some lake house she wants him to visit. Yuri doesn’t know why they’re waiting another year for the wedding when they’re already this married.

“I’m sorry,” Leroy says, unusually subdued. “That was really fucking stupid of me.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing,” Yuri says, annoyed, but Leroy bulldozes over him.

“Are you still trying to come back?” he asks.

Yuri clicks his tongue, trying for irritated. “I was never trying to come back,” he says. The lie sits uneasy on his tongue.

Leroy doesn’t look convinced. “I get it, you know,” he says quietly. “Winning is—it’s addictive. When I talked to you last time, I was still thinking of my Olympic bronze.”

He’s so _tactless_ , talking about the Olympics that Yuri couldn’t attend. Yuri folds his hands over his cane and doesn’t punch him.

“People like Beka and Phichit, they don’t get it,” Leroy continues, oblivious. “They skate for the love of it, not the glory. You and I, we’re different.”

Glory. Viktor took his medal, and called it _glory_.

“But there are other things no one tells you about, like life after retirement,” Leroy glances over at Isabella, still keeping Otabek occupied with effortless charm. He smiles a stupid, besotted smile.

“I think I’m going to retire soon,” he says. “I’m looking forward to it, actually.”

“You’re looking forward to getting married, not retirement,” Yuri points out, and Leroy laughs.

“There are other things, Plisetsky,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m looking forward to other things.”

 

 

 

Otabek waves Leroy and Isabella ahead, so Yuri can start the slow process of climbing down the steps without their audience. Yuri is embarrassingly grateful.

At a stoplight he glances through the window of the car, and catches the eye of a young boy standing at the edge of the curb. People pass him by without batting an eye at the sharp, tilted wings arching behind his back.

He grins at Yuri with needle-sharp teeth. Yuri looks away.

 

 

 

When Yuri was a child, he loved to dance. When Yakov first introduced him to Lilia Nikitichna, she wanted him to train as a _balerina_ , like her. He had the talent for it, she said.

But Yuri had a better talent for skating. He could spin faster on the ice than on wooden dance floors, and once he started being able to jump no one could touch him. Before he was ten years old he was Russia’s rising star. There was a future for him in ballet, but he remembers vividly the thrill he felt standing at the top of his first skating podium at ten, and the pride in his grandfather’s eyes.

There were no gold medals in ballet.

 

 

 

“Leroy’s thinking of retiring,” Yuri tells Otabek, picking olives out of the pasta. “I don’t think he’s gonna keep skating, after.”

Otabek pauses, mouth open around his fork. He’s only a year younger than Leroy, and at the wrong end of the age bracket for figure skating.

“Are you asking if I’ve ever thought about it?” he wants to know. Yuri shrugs.

“I guess,” he says. “Would you keep skating?”

Otabek thinks about it. “I’d like to,” he admits after a moment. “Go back home, train up other Kazakh skaters. I guess Phichit and I want similar things, in this. Our countries have a lot of catching up to do in the sport. I’d like to take a break and go DJ around the world for a year or two though.”

That sounds really cool. “Kazakhstan’s pretty close to Russia,” Yuri tells his bowl of pasta. “You could visit me more often.”

Otabek smiles at him fondly. “Glad you approve of my plans,” he says, and Yuri flushes.

“I never thought about it,” he says, glancing at his leg. It’s been throbbing from all the stair-climbing; he’ll have to put a hot water bag under it later.

Otabek doesn’t say anything, but he reaches out to touch where it hurts. Yuri automatically braces himself, but there’s no relief from the pain.

He shouldn’t be thinking of Viktor when he’s safe and content with Otabek, but he does. Yuri thinks of Viktor, and his goodbye kisses, and the way he looks sleeping on the grass at Yuri’s feet. He thinks of Zhora throwing him into the air and catching him again like he’s a child, and his twig-like fingers that creak when he gestures dramatically. He thinks of Mila and her red, red hair, her casual cruelty and the way she stands guard at his side.

Yuri’s only ever had the one real friend, who didn’t just like him for his gold medals. He could have had more, maybe, but he left them all behind.

 

 

 

“This is not what I meant, when I told you to be careful,” someone says next to him, and Yuri jumps about a foot into the air, fumbling for his cane.

“Oh,” he says when he sees the Winter King sitting on the bench next to him, their shoulders lined with each other. “It’s you.”

The Winter King tilts his head, confused. “You’re less afraid of me today,” he says.

Yuri shrugs, and doesn’t tell him that he was never very frightening to look at, with his gentle smile and kind eyes. In the light of day, wearing a glamour with thick-rimmed glasses and his long, regal coat hidden under a soft shirt that stretches at his stomach, he’s only pretty, not intimidating. Yuri knows the Winter King’s looks are deceiving, but he hopes that even a monarch wouldn’t try to hurt him in the middle of all these humans.

“I never meant for this to happen,” the Winter King says again, absently tugging at a loose thread of his glamour. It’s a very human thing to do, but Yuri knows now that the Winter King was human once. “Running doesn’t help, golden prince.”

“Did you run?” Yuri asks him.

The Winter King makes a soft, surprised noise. “Yes,” he says after a moment. “It was foolish of me. I should have stayed, enjoyed my time while I could.”

Yuri sees Otabek looking over at them, brows furrowed, but doesn’t wave to him for fear of marking him to the fey. Otabek can’t see the frost spreading through the Winter King’s dark hair, or the breath misting in front of his face. To Otabek, the Winter King is just another cold person in an ice skating rink.

“Viktor said you were scared of the fey,” Yuri says. “Sounds like a reasonable reaction to me.”

The Winter King leans back against the wall, relaxing the lines of his body in a way Viktor never does. “I was brought up to be afraid of them,” he says. “But I was the one who went looking for summer fey. My sister was dying of cold, and I wanted to steal some warmth to last her through the winter. It was a long time ago.”

The fey are mortal, according to the stories, but they live longer than humans. Yuri tamps down the urge to ask how old the Winter King is.

“Did you succeed?” he asks instead, and the Winter King laughs prettily.

“You are not the first person to have stolen Viktor, golden prince,” he says.

Yuri had an idea that Viktor had been stolen before, but. “You were married to the _Summer King?_ ” he demands, incredulous.

“Not married,” the Winter King corrects. “Not like you. I bound him, and dragged him to the heart of winter, but there was no exchange. It was wrong of me, but I was desperate. Humans are always desperate, I suppose, when they go looking for the fey.”

He’s not wrong; Yuri was desperate too, when he walked into the forest with his dearest treasures and lied to the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

“I don’t trust you,” he says, instead of accusing another fey monarch of lying. The Winter King might take even less kindly to that than Viktor.

The Winter King looks momentarily hurt, but then he sighs. Under the glamour the furs on his coat rustle. “You don’t have to,” he says. “I just wanted to let you know that I ran, because I was afraid, and I didn’t have anything to be afraid of. It was just Viktor. He was never going to hurt me.”

Yuri blinks at him, at the sweet cadence to his voice and the red flush seeping into his cheeks. At the way he says _Viktor_ , like he’s tasting summer wine on his tongue.

The Winter King is in love with Yuri’s husband. The realization steals the air from Yuri’s lungs.

“What do you want?” he breathes with trepidation, because the fey never give without asking for something in return. “I have nothing to offer you.”

“Of course you do,” the Winter King says. “You could always go back.”

Yuri closes his eyes, resigned. He should have walked away, instead of waiting for the Winter King to close the trap he _knew_ was there.

“You must have noticed,” the Winter King presses, eyes bright and face terribly sincere, like that will help him when Yuri already knows what he is. “Food tastes different in your mouth. The walls close in on you wherever you go. Summer gives you strength, and takes away your pain. Why are you running from it?”

Yuri doesn’t know. He wanted change, but not _this_.

“The troubles of the Summer Court are none of your business,” he says, because he doesn’t dare ask more questions he can’t afford.

Something changes in the Winter King’s eyes, dark and terrifying where they were earnest a moment before. Yuri has offended him.

“I am fey, golden prince,” the Winter King says, and frost blossoms over the wooden bench. It creeps towards Yuri and melts where it touches his jeans, soaking through the fabric. “I, unlike you, take responsibility for what I’ve done.”

“Go home, thief,” the Winter King tells him, and stands. “You have no place among humans anymore.”

 

 

 

“Did you make a friend?” Otabek teases when the Winter King is gone. He walked across the ice when he left, smoothing it out better than any Zamboni, and no one noticed he was wearing boots instead of skates.

“No,” Yuri says, and brushes away the remains of the frost.

 

 

 

The Winter King wasn’t wrong, is the thing.

Otabek asks, “Are you going to eat that?” and Yuri blinks before pushing the last piece of garlic bread he was saving towards him. He goes to pour a bowl of milk then remembers there’s nowhere to put it. Otabek orders Indian delivery and Yuri can’t stand to be in the room, the smell of meat roiling his stomach. The night is always too quiet to sleep even with his stuffed tiger, and he has to set an alarm on his phone to remind him to take the painkillers he’d replaced with Viktor’s magic and summer wine.

He walks to the ice in Otabek’s rink only once, and kneels to touch it with his hands, the way he used to after every good performance. It melts away under his fingers.

 

 

 

Even if Yuri’s leg allowed, he could never skate again. This is the price for his lies.

 

 

 

“No stairs,” Otabek promises as Yuri eases out of the car and leans heavily on his cane. “It’s a weekday, so there shouldn’t be too many people either.”

Yuri limps towards the club. “There better not be,” he says.

 

 

 

Otabek is wrong.

There aren’t too many _humans_ here.

Yuri watches with wide eyes as faerie after faerie walks through the door, glamoured from head to toe to hide their wings and claws and scales. They waltz to the bar to order human drinks and dance to the beat of Otabek’s music, pulling the few humans to them with effortless seduction. One of them backs up against Yuri’s stool and he holds his breath, but she barely notices, caught up in the haze of what is undoubtedly a _revelry_.

Yuri drops his eyes and turns to his one drink. Rules will matter here, away from Viktor’s Court. Don’t stare, don’t be rude, don’t attract their attention. God, Yuri wants to _run_ , but he can’t just _leave_ Otabek.

He follows the rules, but it doesn’t work, like it never has for him. A faerie onto the stool next to Yuri’s, leaning an elbow on the bar and eyeing him with obvious interest. He’s no summer fey, with his sharp, dark wings and clever green eyes. He’s not of the Winter Court either, carrying blue at his fingertips like the north wind.

“I’d heard the golden prince was in my city,” he says, and Yuri thinks, _he knows who I am_.

“Chris, you want anything?” the bartender asks, but the faerie— _Chris_ , if that’s what he wants to be called tonight—waves him away.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” Yuri says carefully. “I’d appreciate it if you left me alone.”

Chris smiles at him. Under his glamour he could be as beautiful as Viktor or the Winter King, but for the most part he looks very—human. It’s unsettling.

“I couldn’t do that,” he says. “I’ve been wanting to meet you for ages, but Viktor’s been awfully protective.”

Yuri stills. This isn’t the first time he’s hearing that, that Viktor has been hiding him away from the other Courts.

“Well, now you’ve met me,” he says, desperate to end the conversation. Chris isn’t deterred. He leans towards Yuri, all long limbs and sensuous seduction.

“Yes,” he says, almost regretful. “You are not what I imagined.”

Yuri is curious despite himself. “What did you imagine?” he asks, and Chris bares his teeth in something that doesn’t pass for a smile. Suddenly, he’s not as beautiful, or as human.

“Someone more worthy,” he says, and clasps a hand around Yuri’s wrist. The steel chain Yuri still wears burns against his throat. “Come, golden prince. You will dance with us.”

“No,” Yuri says, but Chris has already pulled him out of his seat. He stumbles and drops his cane, pain shooting up his thigh as he puts pressure on his leg, and Chris settles a hand over his hip and pours magic into his skin that burns like fire.

Yuri tilts his head back and screams.

“Stop!” says a familiar voice, but by then he’s on the ground, panting through the haze of pain. He’s going to throw up. He’s going to _pass out_.

Chris steps back, arms spread innocently, then there’s a flash of red at the edge of Yuri’s vision and Mila bounding between him and Chris. Yuri has never seen her so angry.

“He’s the summer prince!” she shouts, wings raised to sharp points, hiding Yuri from Chris’s line of sight. “He can’t take your dark magic! What were you thinking?”

Yuri blinks to clear his vision. Chris is smiling again, terrifyingly human. “I just wanted to make sure,” he says. “The boy wears iron on his skin. I thought—”

“You thought Viktor was wrong,” Mila cuts in.

Chris shrugs. “He’s been wrong before,” he says benevolently, but his green eyes flash against the strobe lights.

Mila’s wings bristle. Yuri uses both hands to push himself to his feet, wobbling dangerously. His knees buckle under him, and he has to catch himself on the bar stool. The human bartender keeps on serving drinks to the eager crowd, oblivious. All the humans seem oblivious, actually, lost in dance and drink, and only some of the fey have gathered around Chris, tittering in their foreign tongue. They don’t seem to think Mila is a threat.

“You’re a monarch,” Yuri doesn’t realize he’s spoken until Mila and Chris turn to face him. In the next instant Mila is by his side, holding him up with a strong arm around his shoulders. She bends down to pick up his cane, then hands it to him.

“And you are not,” Chris says. “You should take off that necklace before it brands your neck, golden prince.”

Yuri deliberately tucks the steel chain back under his collar, and Chris bursts into laughter. It’s the cruelest thing Yuri’s ever heard.

“Well, maybe I was wrong,” Chris muses, and opens his wings just once, like Viktor did when he couldn’t lie. “Maybe you can be worth something after all.”

He looks at Mila. “Take your prince and go, little sprite. And remind him of the rules of the fey. I will not be so forgiving next time.”

“What should I tell my King?” Mila calls as he turns to leave, and Chris winces, chagrined. Yuri wonders if _he_ was always a faerie; both him and the Winter King wear more human emotions on their faces than Viktor ever has.

“That I didn’t damage his husband _too_ badly?” Chris waves at them, letting a pair of the besotted humans pull him close with eager hands. He grins and slides their bodies together, Mila and Yuri forgotten as he merges into the revelry of his Court.

“Come on,” Mila says quietly, pulling him towards the door, but Yuri resists.

“I have a friend here,” he says. “I can’t leave him behind.”

“He’s safe as long as he doesn’t interfere,” she tells him. “I’ll come back for him, but you can’t stay here any longer. Come outside, please.”

It’s the first time Yuri’s heard her say _please_. He lets her lead him into the blessedly silent night air and feels a weight lift from his chest. Mila drops to her knees in front of him, fussing over his leg.

“I can’t heal this damage,” she says, stroking light fingers over the fabric of his jeans. Yuri can’t believe it wasn’t burned off. “Only another monarch could, and since it’s you, it can only be Viktor. It will hurt terribly tomorrow, but I can take some pain tonight. What were you _thinking_ , thief, walking into a Dark Court revelry?”

“I didn’t know,” Yuri gasps, feeling the relief of summer magic thrumming through him. It’s not the pure sunshine of Viktor’s power, but it works as well as anything. “I didn’t think they’d _attack_ me.”

Mila hums her displeasure and stands. “That wasn’t an attack,” she says. “It was a test.”

Yuri blinks at her with heavy eyes. “Did I pass?” he asks, startling her into a laugh. Yuri missed her laugh.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But you’ve created quite a mess. Angering the Winter King, walking into the Dark King’s territory. You’re lucky you didn’t stumble across the High Queen; _she_ is not a friend of Viktor’s.”

“I didn’t know it was the Dark King’s territory,” Yuri says again. If this is the treatment he gets from friends, he never wants to meet this High Queen. “Did Viktor send you?”

“No,” Mila says. “Viktor will not chase you.”

Because Viktor keeps his word. Yuri sways on his feet, suddenly exhausted. He wants to go home. Not Otabek’s home, but his grandfather’s home in their little village where the summer fey patrol by his house and the Summer King protects him.

“We didn’t think you’d leave the village,” Mila continues, curling a hand around Yuri’s elbow. Her nails don’t dig into his skin like they once did. “You ran away, and you didn’t release our King, and now every fey in the world knows that the summer prince is in the Dark King’s city. I came as soon as I could.”

Two hundred and twelve days ago Yuri would have told her to fuck off, probably. Now, he sighs and says, “Thank you.”

Mila flushes, pleased. “You are my prince,” she says, and Yuri hears, _you are my friend_.

 

 

 

Otabek rushes out of the club with his headphones still on, Mila trailing behind him. The slip of a dress she wears like Viktor that would have gotten her arrested by humans is hidden under a glamour, along with her wings. Otabek must think she looks normal, because his eyes are only on Yuri.

“I’m fine,” Yuri reassures before Otabek can open his mouth and say his name or something equally disastrous. The lie makes him physically nauseous, but he pushes on. “My leg was just acting up, and Mila helped out.”

Otabek pauses, sensing something amiss even if Yuri isn’t saying it. He looks at Mila, who’s swayed towards Yuri again, tactile as all summer fey, and then at Yuri, who’s allowing it.

“You know her,” he says, and it’s not a question. Yuri shrugs at him helplessly, then turns to Mila when she pulls on his arm to get his attention. Otabek is unimportant to her, now that Yuri knows he’s safe.

“Make your decision quickly, thief,” she breathes in the space between them, too low for Otabek to hear. “Viktor is proud; he will give you all the time you want, but the other Courts will not stand for this much longer. The world suffers for the Summer Court’s troubles.”

She means the storms, and the droughts. Yuri scowls at her; he’s never liked being pushed.

“It’s not my fault Viktor’s throwing a tantrum,” he scoffs, and Mila reels back from him.

“Viktor?” she says, blue eyes wide with surprise. “It’s not Viktor who is conflicted, summer prince. It’s you.”

 

 

 

Yuri isn’t totally sure how they get back to the apartment. Otabek half-carries him, probably, since his leg is mostly numb and useless, and Yuri doesn’t try to stop him. Misha yowls viciously at him from the kitchen. She hasn’t come near him once in all the days he’s been here, even after the scent of the summer fey must have worn off.

He knows now, it’s not other faeries she’s afraid of. It’s _him_.

His steel chain is too hot around his neck. He can’t sleep through the night in the Dark King’s territory. The Winter King’s frost couldn’t touch him. The Dark King’s magic only hurt him. He can’t stand the smell of meat, and can barely lie without wanting to bleach his tongue. His will is affecting Summer.

Otabek lowers him to his bed, unwinding Yuri’s arm from his neck. He’s been totally silent since Mila disappeared around the curb with a wave and a smile, except to tell Yuri when the Uber arrived. He kneels on the floor now, looking up at Yuri sitting on the mattress, and reaches to unlace Yuri’s shoes.

“You’re shaking,” he says, gentle with Yuri’s bad leg.

“Am I?” Yuri asks, dazed. What would he have done, if the Dark King had thought to hurt Otabek? What would he have done if Mila hadn’t shown up? How could he have been so _stupid_ , to think he could just _run away_ after stealing the _Summer King_ , and everything would be just fine?

“Yura,” Otabek says, and leans up to wrap one arm around Yuri’s shoulders. Yuri’s cheeks are wet. The fey don’t use his name; Yuri doesn’t trust any of them enough to tell them.

“You’re okay, Yura,” Otabek promises, and pulls him to his chest. Yuri hasn’t been this close to Otabek since—Rostelecom, last year. A hotel room in Moscow. Winner fucks loser, and Otabek had won.

Otabek isn’t practiced in the art of comfort, and certainly not in the art of comforting Yuri, who has never wanted it. But he’s still here, grabbing tissues off the nightstand to wave awkwardly under Yuri’s running nose. Fuck, he’s so _bad_ at this.

Yuri tilts his head down, and kisses him.

Otabek makes a surprised sound, but he kisses back, slow and sweet. His arms go around Yuri properly, still figure skater strong where Yuri’s body has weakened, softness around his middle and his bad leg a thin, limp weight hanging from his hip.

Otabek doesn’t seem to care. He lets Yuri push his shirt up his stomach and pulls away just long enough to take it off, coming back with eager hands sliding up Yuri’s thighs, careful not to hurt. The world shrinks to this room, four walls and a bed, soft lamplight casting shadows under the hollow of Otabek’s eyes.

Yuri’s missed this.

Otabek kisses his lips, then his red cheek. When Yuri makes a noise he stops, lips curving in an amused smile, and Yuri swats at his arm.

“Shut up,” he snaps half-heartedly, tugging at Otabek’s pants. “Get these off.”

“So demanding,” Otabek says, laughing at him. He has such a quiet laugh; Yuri likes the way it lines the edges of his eyes. He drags himself up the bed with his arms and Otabek climbs over him, pressing him into the sheets with hands and mouth. They don’t have sex like this very often, when they have sex at all. Yuri is too impatient for this careful exploration, but with his leg holding him down he has to go at Otabek’s pace.

“Hurry _up_ ,” he says, because the slower Otabek is, the more time Yuri has to _think_. Otabek rolls his eyes but complies, undoing Yuri’s jeans, but then he stops entirely.

“Yura,” he says, and Yuri’s cheeks go hot, mortified.

“It’s just the pain meds,” he says. “Doesn’t matter; I want it, okay?”

For all that Otabek is good at letting Yuri lie to himself, he hesitates now, and Yuri wants to sink into the ground.

“Never mind,” he says quickly, but Otabek kisses him again, palming over the soft front of Yuri’s briefs experimentally, then with intent. He’s gotten very good at redirecting Yuri’s anger, and embarrassment.

“What do you want?” he murmurs into Yuri’s mouth, and Yuri sighs, “I don’t care, whatever, just _do something_.”

Otabek does his stupid quiet half-laugh again, and mouths down Yuri’s neck to where his steel chain hangs over his collarbone. He takes it between his teeth, and suddenly it _burns_.

“Fuck!” Yuri shouts, startling them both. He scrambles upright, fumbling with the clasp with shaking hands that sear against the heat until Otabek pushes them away.

“Hold still,” he orders, and snaps the clasp off. He tosses the chain on the covers and turns back to put a hand on Yuri’s bad leg, and Yuri looks at it and thinks, _I’m married_.

“You okay? What was that?” Otabek wants to know. Yuri blinks at him, at his strong shoulders and the line of his jaw, and his dick still half-hard between his legs.

He could, is the thing. He could pull Otabek back down onto the mattress, and let him fuck him. If the stories are true, that’s all it would take to invalidate an unconsummated faerie marriage. Yuri would be free of Viktor, and the fey, but Yuri’s medal would still be around Viktor’s neck.

Yuri was the one who walked into the forest, and told the Summer King he sought a _companion_. Yuri was the one who didn’t take his gift back before he left.

The Winter King called him _irresponsible_.

“I can’t do this,” Yuri says numbly. “I don’t—I can’t do this.”

“We don’t have to,” Otabek says immediately, backing off to give him space without question. He’s so _patient_ with Yuri, even when Yuri’s being the biggest asshole on the entire _planet_. “Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Yuri says, and closes his eyes. Otabek has given him comfort, and safety, and _space_. He waited, and was patient, and didn’t push when Yuri needed him not to, even when Yuri ignored him, and forgot.

Yuri has taken from Otabek, just like he took from Viktor. Yuri is fey, now. He owes a debt.

 

 

 

They get dressed, then go out to the living room where it’s less—intimate. Otabek folds his legs in front of him, faces Yuri on the couch, and listens.

“But he said he wouldn’t chase you,” he says, instead of calling Yuri an idiot like he should. Maybe _delusional_ would be better. “You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.”

It’s a very human thing to say. Yuri can’t explain how the weight of everything he’s taken sits on his chest, from all the answers he received from the Winter King to the sunshine Viktor poured into his body.

“I have to,” he repeats what the Winter King told him. “There’s no place for me here.”

He’s not safe for Otabek anymore, is what he doesn’t say. Not while his debts hang over his head and his medal sits against the Summer King’s breast.

Otabek frowns, uncomprehending. “Do you even like him?”

“You mean Viktor?” Yuri clarifies, then thinks about it. “I don’t know. I don’t really know him. I like Mila, and Zhora.”

“You’re not married to Mila or Zhora,” Otabek says, dry, and Yuri wonders if this is how it will be between them from now on, Otabek failing to follow the things Yuri knows instinctively. Has known instinctively for months.

“I stole him,” he says, because that’s true even if Summer chose him. Winter didn’t take the Winter King either, before he went looking for faeries. “He’s my husband.”

Otabek shifts uncomfortably, like he has every time Yuri used that word. Yuri supposes it has different connotations here than the ones he’s grown to consider, that mean _lover_ instead of—whatever he is with Viktor.

“You always have a place with me,” Otabek says, and Yuri wonders why Summer chose him when Otabek would make a far better fey prince, fair and honest and true. Yuri drops his eyes; he can barely stand to look at Otabek when he’s like this, willingly handing Yuri things he doesn’t know how to accept and expecting nothing in return.

Something in his face must give him away, because Otabek sits up straight.

“You _want_ to go back,” he says, understanding dawning in his voice. Yuri puts his head in his hands.

“I don’t know,” he says, but he does. He did the moment Mila said, _you are my prince_ , even if he didn’t want to think about it. She came for him like she would have for her King. She is his fey, now, as she is Viktor’s.

“You’re taking this pretty well,” he says eventually, when they’ve sat in silence long enough that Misha has poked her head out of the kitchen. Otabek snorts, but the line between his brows smooths out.

“My family believes in jinns,” he says. “Mischievous creatures with their own rules and free will, made of fire. I grew up with stories of them from the Quran, and they sound an awful lot like faeries.”

“I don’t know if they’re the same,” Yuri shrugs. “I don’t know a lot of things.”

Otabek makes a soft sound of amusement. It makes Yuri want to kiss him again, but he doesn’t.

“I don’t think you lied about what you wanted,” Otabek tells him. Yuri slumps against the cushions and pushes his hands through his hair.

“I _did_ ,” he says, frustrated. “I thought I wanted change, but I didn’t, not really. I just wanted things to go back to how they were. I wanted my leg to get better, and I wanted to go back to figure skating, and I wanted to win more stupid medals.”

Otabek reaches out to touch his cheek. Yuri turns his face into Otabek’s palm and thinks, only for a moment, of a life here with his best friend. University, maybe. Or something else. He could figure it out. He could stay.

“I don’t think you lied, Yura,” Otabek says again, and Yuri thinks, _no, I can’t_. “When you said you wanted a companion.”

 

 

 

Otabek catches his hand before Yuri can go back to the spare room. He doesn’t say anything, but Yuri redirects his steps and limps into the space that is Otabek’s in its entirety, from the guarded skates stacked neatly in the corner to the leather jacket flung carelessly over the desk chair overflowing with unwashed clothes. There are no cat hairs on the bed; Misha isn’t allowed in this room, a product of Otabek’s mother’s hand reaching across the ocean.

Yuri wakes up screaming, paralyzed from pain worse than anything he’s felt since he stopped the Oxy, months ago. Otabek scrambles up to gets his pills, helps Yuri swallow them, and doesn’t call an ambulance even though he clearly wants to. He just sits there as Yuri cries ugly, desperate tears, and holds his hand.

 

 

 

“You should visit me,” Yuri says as they stand in the middle of the bustling airport, cane gripped in his hand. Otabek’s eyes go soft.

“I will,” he says.

Yuri goes home on day two hundred and seventeen, with a heavier limp than when he left and Otabek’s promise warming him better than any fey wine.

 

 

 


	3. Act III

 

 

Yuri bypasses customs and picks up his own suitcase, wheels it awkwardly down the ramp where it keeps trying to go faster than he can. He takes a taxi to the train station and then another to the village, because he came back earlier than he was supposed to and didn’t ask his grandfather to pick him up.

The house is empty when he walks in, so Yuri puts down his suitcase, greets Potya who is mad at him for going away for so long, takes his pills, and goes to bed.

The forest can wait.

 

 

 

His grandfather makes borscht for dinner. Yuri balks at the smell before he realizes it’s fish, but after a few bites even that starts to turn his stomach. He tears off a bigger chunk of bread and chews it dry, and his grandfather looks at him with deep concern. Yuri’s getting really tired of people looking at him like that.

“You barely touched your food,” his grandfather says when Yuri gets up to wash the dishes in their tiny sink, spooning some of the fish into Potya’s bowl and setting aside the last of the bread. “Are you sick, Yurotchka?”

“I’m jetlagged,” Yuri says, which isn’t a lie. The wind chimes tinkle outside like a warning, and Yuri bites the inside of his cheek. He came _back_ , but apparently it’s not enough. The forest has been pulling at him all day, and Yuri just—isn’t ready. He doesn’t know what will happen when he sees Viktor again.

His grandfather’s mouth is still turned down. Yuri feels awful; he’s been living with his grandfather for months, he used to tell his grandfather _everything_ , and now they can barely hold a dinner conversation.

“Dedulya,” he says, making a snap decision. “Can I come with you on your boat tomorrow?”

 

 

 

His grandfather is delighted that Yuri is showing interest in something other than the forest. He introduces Yuri to his (old) friends and shows him how to steer the (old) boat and teaches him to throw the (old) fishing net. The smile on his face makes him twenty years younger.

By the time they come home, the treeline is dark and silent, and there’s no question of Yuri leaving the house again until daylight. He makes dinner, putting the fish only in his grandfather’s portion, and cleans his plate. It makes his grandfather even happier, and hearing him add more and more adjectives to his compliments of the food makes Yuri laugh. It’s nice. It’s—normal.

The next day, Yuri asks to join him again.

 

 

 

“You don’t know?” Otabek asks, perplexed. His pixelated face blinks at Yuri. “What do you mean you don’t know? Did they just not show up?”

“Well,” Yuri says. “I haven’t exactly checked.”

There’s a long pause from Otabek’s end, then a small sound, like a smothered laugh. Yuri scowls at his Skype screen, but Otabek doesn’t care.

“Shut up,” he says preemptively, and Otabek rolls his eyes.

“Are you afraid, Yura?” he asks, and Yuri’s back goes up.

“Of course not!” he snaps. “Look, I’m just spending time with dedulya for a bit; there’s nothing wrong with that. They waited a month, they can wait a bit more. I’ve made my decision; isn’t that the point?”

He made his decision, and the weather calmed down. It stopped raining in India and started in South Africa, and it hasn’t stormed once in five days. Yuri almost wishes it hadn’t; blaming Viktor is harder when he has such tangible evidence that all of this was his fault, even if he didn’t know it.

Otabek is so still on the other end that Yuri thinks the connection froze, but then he hears a soft sigh. “I thought you wanted to make this work,” Otabek says.

Yuri thought so too, but now he’s _here_ and he doesn’t know anymore.

“I just need a little more time,” he admits, equally quiet. “That’s all.”

Otabek says nothing for a long moment, and Yuri knows he’s considering his words. He’s self-aware enough to know that being his friend isn’t easy, being his lover is even less, and the only reason Otabek’s made it this far is because he’s learned to censor himself, even when he thinks Yuri is wrong.

“There’s not much difference between running away and staying still, Yura,” Otabek finally says, and this is the other reason he’s still Yuri’s favorite: he _doesn’t_ always hold back. “Not when it’s fear driving you either way.”

“I’m not afraid,” Yuri says reflexively. The sour taste of a lie lingers on his tongue.

Otabek doesn’t call him on it, even though maybe he should. “They’re not going to come after you,” he points out. “If this is what you want to do, you could.”

This is not what Yuri wants to do. For all that he likes spending time with his grandfather, the boat is—boring.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “Tell me about your quad loop.”

“No,” Otabek says clearly, and Yuri blinks. In all the years they’ve known each other, he can count the number of time Otabek has told him no on one hand.

“You don’t want to hear about my skating,” Otabek continues, and Yuri can barely see his face but he recognizes the mulish set of his jaw. “You were miserable in the rink when I took you there, but you forced yourself to stay. I saw your face when you looked at my skates. I’m not going to talk to you about skating.”

That’s absurd. They’ve never had anything else to talk about, not really. Yuri might have to live without it now, but Otabek doesn’t.

“You can always complain about your faeries,” Otabek says when Yuri tells him that. “Or JJ.”

“They’re not my faeries,” Yuri snaps, annoyed. “So what, we’re just going to pretend you’re not an internationally ranked competitive figure skater from now on? Pretend that you have a life outside training?”

“I _do_ have a life outside training!” Otabek explodes suddenly. Yuri rears back in surprise. “I watch TV shows, I have family back home that I talk to, I have friends who aren’t skaters! Just because _you_ never cared for anything else doesn’t mean I don’t!”

He stops for a breath, then says, “You know how I feel about you.”

No. _No_. Yuri is not ready for this conversation.

“Beka, don’t,” he starts, but Otabek cuts him off.

“You _know_ ,” he presses, steel in his voice.

Yuri puts his face in his hands. His blood rushes loud in his ears.

“Yeah,” he says through his fingers. “I know.”

How can he not, when Otabek has looked at him this way every day since he was fifteen?

“You never had time for it,” Otabek pushes on. “My feelings or yours. So we put it on hold, and decided, after. Well, this is after.”

“What do you want me to _say?_ ” Yuri shouts at him, helpless and terrified and—angry. He hasn’t been angry at Otabek in _years_. “I _know_ that, but _everything_ has changed! Why would you tell me this _now?_ ”

It’s not _fair_. Otabek can’t be doing this to him, not now, not when Yuri needs him to be the one constant in his life untouched by his fucking leg. Yuri wants to scream.

“Because everything _has_ changed,” Otabek says, quiet again. “ _You’ve_ changed. You’re—married,” his voice dips on the word like a curse. “You made new friends. You’re reading books, and comics, instead of watching skating videos over and over again.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Yuri demands, and Otabek sighs so loud Yuri hears it static over the call.

“I’m trying to tell you that you have _time_. If you let yourself, you could have a _life_ ,” he says. “Yura, there can be _so many things_ for us to talk about.”

 

 

 

That night, Yuri digs his skates out from under his bed and sits with them in his lap.

_Safety_ , Viktor called them, instead of _love_. He was wrong. These skates have been his constant companions for years, and Yuri has loved them with all his heart. He loved them so much he didn’t have love to spare for anything else.

He never imagined a life without them, but here he is.

“Winning gold medals was easier,” he tells his cat. Potya purrs and rubs his cheek against a skate guard, unbothered by Yuri or his tears.

 

 

 

If Otabek can tell Yuri the things he’s not ready to hear without expecting anything in return, if _Leroy_ can be brave enough for change, then Yuri has no excuse.

 

 

 

The forest is greener than he remembers. The faerie rings stand out in bright colors today, like they know he’s looking, and when he lowers himself next to one he feels like it wants him to step through. Mila greets him there, and Zhora, and they sit with him and go through his comics and laugh at what he’s forgotten of their language in the month he was gone.

This is it. Yuri waits with bated breath, rehearsing an apology in his head. The sun sets, but Viktor doesn’t come.

 

 

 

Mila and Zhora are no help that day, or the next morning. Yuri demands to know where Viktor is, but they don’t know any better than the first time he asked.

“He’s punishing me,” Yuri grumbles, spread out on the grass on his stomach. “I came back!”

Zhora and Mila exchange a speaking glance. This is probably not what they signed up for, appeasing a sulking prince while their king went off to do god knows what. Frolic in the flowers, maybe. Yuri had hoped this would be simpler. He’d come home, take responsibility for his choices, then learn—how to be a faerie, or something. There must be a guide.

Instead, he got two summer fey who never thought to spy on their king, and a husband who seems to want to be married even less than Yuri does.

“We didn’t know you would,” Zhora says carefully, like Yuri hasn’t guessed that already. It’s _irritating_ ; why do they think he’s here now? “We thought you’d run forever.”

“Most of the Court fey thought you’d abandoned us,” Mila tells him, knotting flowers into her hair. “We thought Summer would be short this year.”

Yuri plucks at the grass, uneasy. _We_ , she says, like she thought that too, even though she came after him as far as into the Dark King’s city.

“I would have come back eventually,” Yuri says, hating the petulance in his voice. “I would have figured it out.”

“Would you?” Zhora wants to know. Summer fey change their moods like summer storms, at the drop of a hat and without any warning. Zhora is no different, eyes dark with anger where he was mild-mannered a second ago. Yuri recoils from him instinctively, but Zhora stays where he is. “When, exactly? In another decade? Maybe in another century, when your precious humans were all dead and gone? Or maybe you would have taken a lover and broken your contract, and left our King bound to your will and forgotten about us.”

“I wouldn’t have done that!” Yuri protests, and Mila snaps, “Zhora!”

Zhora is undeterred. “While you were gone,” he says, pretty face twisted in an ugly scowl. “The King was here. He came every day, not because he wanted to, but because Summer bound him to you. He did not go to his trees, or to his Makkachin. When he learned where you’d gone, he did not visit the Dark King, because you were in that city and he promised not to chase you. The Summer Court has spent weeks undoing the damage you caused to this world, and you pretend as though you are owed any more than what you have already been given.”

That’s unfair. It’s so fucking unfair, and Yuri, Yuri is the _summer prince_. He doesn’t have to sit back and _take_ this anymore.

“You act like I asked for this!” he shouts at Zhora before he can stop himself, pushing up to the one knee that won’t buckle under him. “I didn’t _ask_ for Summer to pick me, I didn’t _ask_ Viktor to take my gift! It could have been any one of you, but it wasn’t, and that wasn’t my choice! I _could_ have abandoned you, but I didn’t. I’m here now, and I’m taking responsibility. Why isn’t that enough?”

“Zhora,” Mila says again, lower. Threatening. Zhora pays her no mind, rising to his feet, pale wings spread to their full length behind him.

“Do you think _we_ had a choice, you foolish little human?” he scoffs. He’s angry too, and all the authority Yuri possesses now won’t make it go away. “Do you think your _good_ _intentions_ make it better when we are the ones who pay for your deceit?”

He shakes his head. “You are not forgiven, golden prince,” he says with cutting precision. “You are not trusted. You lied to us, and we have not forgotten.”

The silence lingers after Zhora leaves. Yuri breathes through the haze of red coloring his vision, while Mila plucks another flower for her hair and turns the page of the comic lying in the ground before her.

“Are they all angry with me?” Yuri finally grits through his teeth, and Mila shrugs, as unbothered by Yuri’s moods as she has always been.

“Not all,” she says, which isn’t as reassuring as she seems to think. Yuri puts his hot face in the cool grass.

“This is why we haven’t gone to the Court,” he realizes slowly. “I’m not welcome there anymore.”

“Not without Viktor, no,” Mila agrees. “And he’s not here.”

He came when Yuri was gone, and now he’s gone when Yuri is here. He protected Yuri when he didn’t have to and took Yuri’s pain even though he knew Yuri had lied, then left Yuri to fend for himself when he made mistakes he wasn’t aware of. Yuri doesn’t _understand_ Viktor. Right now, he’s not sure he cares to.

Mila keeps looking through Yuri’s new comic, distracted by the violent story and colorful pictures. Yuri lays his head on his arms and looks at her, sitting with legs splayed before her like a child, thin dress ridden up to her hips and uncaring of human things like modesty. Like Viktor, she never lets him forget what she is. Unlike Viktor, she always lets him know what she wants from him.

It might have been easier, if she were the one he was chosen for, but then they might never have been able to be like this. Yuri can’t bring himself to want that.

 

 

 

“Wake up, golden prince,” Mila shakes him awake. “It’s time to go home.”

Yuri blinks blearily at her, squinting against the setting sun. His leg is _throbbing_ ; he has to let Mila grab under his armpits to pull him to his feet.

“Viktor isn’t coming, is he?” he asks when he takes in the rest of the forest, empty save for them. Mila stills against him, which is all the reply he needs.

Yuri is done. He can’t wait another month for Viktor like he did the first time, furious and terrified and cowering from the summer fey clawing at his skin. He won’t. He came back, and he deserves better than to be punished for ignorance that wasn’t his fault.

“If you see my husband,” he tells Mila, taking his cane from where she’s holding it out. “Tell him I said, tomorrow is another fucking day.”

 

 

 

The last time he spoke to Otabek, he told Yuri, “You should call JJ.”

“ _What_?” Yuri said, appalled. “Why would I want to talk to _Leroy?_ ”

“Because he makes you brave,” Otabek said like it was obvious, and laughed when Yuri’s jaw dropped.

“I don’t need _Leroy_ to make me brave,” Yuri said, making a face at his webcam. “I have you.”

Otabek didn’t disagree, but he didn’t look like he believed Yuri, either.

 

 

 

Now, Yuri looks down at his phone, _Jean-Jacques Leroy_ and _Otabek Altin_ listed in his contacts one after the other, _J_ before _O_. His thumb hovers over _Otabek Altin_ , but he doesn’t press it.

 

 

 

“Plisetsky!” Leroy greets him with an inappropriate amount of enthusiasm for what time it must be in Toronto. “You left so suddenly; I hope your grandfather is alright.”

“I—no,” Yuri says, caught off-guard by the fact that Leroy even knows about his grandfather. Yuri’s certainly never told him; so it must have been Otabek. Do they _talk_ about him? “He’s fine.”

“That’s good to hear,” Leroy says. “Bella would have liked to see you again before you left.”

Yuri winces; it was rude of him to leave without at least giving them a call. “Tell Izzy that all she has to do is send me a 911 text, and I’ll fly over to kick your ass for her.”

Leroy makes a soft, disgruntled sound; Yuri and Isabella’s friendship has always confused him, and Yuri takes great pleasure from it. Maybe Otabek was right, he thinks as familiar, comfortable annoyance settles into him. After the few days he’s had, yelling at Leroy will probably make him feel better.

“So what are you up to now?” Leroy prods. There’s a shuffle of movement in the background, then Isabella’s voice close to the phone.

“Go back to sleep, Bella, it’s just Plisetsky,” Leroy says, and Yuri rolls his eyes.

“You could’ve just told me to call back later,” he says.

Leroy scoffs at him, and Yuri hears the creak of floorboards as he walks, presumably out of the bedroom. “You wouldn’t have called back later,” he says. “This is the first time you’ve _ever_ called me; honestly, I’m a little worried you _are_ getting ready to jump off a bridge.”

“If I were, I would never have called _you_ before I did it,” Yuri says, appalled. “This isn’t the first time I’ve called you.”

“Yeah, it is,” Leroy says, not unkindly. “So what’s so bad that you can’t talk to Beka about it?”

Yuri opens his mouth to say, _none of your business_ , then stops. It’s tempting to keep going. He could argue with Leroy about semantics for an hour now, then go back to the forest tomorrow and sit and wait for Viktor, like he always does. He could prove Otabek wrong, and change nothing at all.

But if that was what he wanted, he would have called Otabek.

“It’s not bad,” he say instead. “I was just thinking of doing something stupid.”

“Calling me is hardly stupid,” Leroy points out, and that’s so fucking typical Yuri starts to laugh. “Oh, that’s not the stupid thing.”

“It is, actually,” Yuri manages, shoulders still shaking. “But no, surprisingly, not everything’s about you. I was thinking of stupid like, I don’t know, quad axel without a harness.”

Leroy is quiet for a long moment, then he asks, “Have you ever tried it?”

“Yeah,” Yuri says. When he was nineteen, and positive he was ready for it, and really very wrong. “Got me benched for two weeks. You?”

“No,” Leroy admits. “That was your goal, not mine. I just wanted three Olympic golds.”

He only has one, just like Yuri never landed a harness-free quad axel. Someday someone will win three Olympic golds again, and someone else will land a clean quad axel in competition, but it won’t be them.

“It was a good run, wasn’t it?” Leroy adds wistfully. “You nearly had your quad axel, I went for my Olympic golds—”

“We both failed,” Yuri cuts in, and Leroy makes an uncharacteristically frustrated noise.

“That’s not the _point_ , Plisetsky,” he says. “The point is that we _tried_.”

 

 

 

_talked to leroy_ , Yuri texts Otabek. _didnt help_.

_liar_ , Otabek texts back. It makes Yuri smile.

 

 

 

This is the stupid thing Yuri does.

He goes off the path he’s carved for himself, at the end of which Mila is no doubt waiting for him even today, and deeper into the forest than he’s ever been. The animals here aren’t used to humans; the rabbits don’t hop away when he steps too close, and Yuri even thinks he glimpses a deer. His leg isn’t used to walking this far, but Yuri took extra painkillers this morning, and it holds when he stops in front of a small circle of mushrooms half-hidden among the bushes.

There are other ways he could have done this, starting with asking Mila for help. But Yuri is here to pay off his debts, not accrue more.

_Take me to my husband_ , he thinks, and steps into the faerie ring.

 

 

 

When he opens his eyes, he’s ankle-deep in snow.

 

 

 

“Shit,” Yuri mutters to himself, and looks around the forest, at the naked trees with branches weighed down with frost and the layer of white around him untouched by even animal prints. It’s very still, and very quiet, and there’s definitely no Viktor anywhere around.

This was a bad idea.

“Take me home,” he says, but nothing happens. He digs his cane into the space around him, marking the faerie ring, then carefully eases out of it. His cane doesn’t slip in the fresh snow. Then he limps back into the circle and says, “Take me to Mila.”

He closes his eyes, then opens them, heart in his throat. He’s still standing in a snowy forest, and it’s fucking _freezing_. Yuri is dressed for summer, not winter.

“Fuck,” he says, shivering in the wind. In this weather, it’s going to get dark sooner rather than later, and he won’t survive the night like this in below freezing temperatures. The trees seem thinner ahead, but all he can really see is white.

Okay, he thinks. _Okay_. If fey magic brought him here, Viktor must be around. At the very least, he knows Mila will look for him. All he has to do is—not go too far.

Yuri grips his cane tight in his hand, and limps forward into the trees.

 

 

 

His leg loses mobility within the first five minutes. He dumps his backpack and starts using both hands to lean on his cane after another five. The cold air hurts his lungs. There’s a slow terror creeping up his spine like a monster stalking him from behind, making his teeth chatter and forcing him to keep looking straight ahead.

Half an hour later, his eyes are heavy and his toes have ached and hurt and gone numb through his shoes. Yuri is _tired_ ; his body unused to dragging his leg around like a useless stump and out of practice with this much exertion.

If he clears up the snow a little his feet will be less cold, and if he stops for a moment he can drop his cane and tuck both hands under his armpits to warm them up. When he manages to squash the irrational fear of turning around, he can see only one set of footprints, impossible to miss and easy to follow.

As long as it doesn’t start snowing again, he has some time.

Yuri uses his cane to hack at the soft, fresh snow at the base of a tree until there’s a small clearing he can curl his whole body into, leaning back against a tree trunk frozen as solid as the ground. His leg is too numb to protest being folded, and it’s not like he’ll be here long.

Shadows move at the edge of his vision, soft whispers floating in the wind and lilting, cruel laughter that reminds him of the Dark King, and Viktor. Curious winter fey, maybe, or dark fey, entertained by the summer prince stranded in the heart of Winter.

Yuri doesn’t want to look at them, so he closes his eyes. Just a few minutes of rest, then he’ll retrace his steps, and try the faerie ring again.

 

 

 

“He’s freezing,” someone says, far away at the edge of Yuri’s consciousness. Yuri reaches for recognition, but it’s washed away in a sudden burst of what feels like liquid _fire_ pouring through his veins.

Yuri screams. His body tries to jerk away from the pain, but his arms and legs are trapped like they were in his fucking hospital bed, and he struggles futilely like the first morning they took him off the morphine, his world narrowed down to hurt and impossible, unfathomable terror.

“Careful,” he thinks he hears another person say, and the first voice warns, “Don’t touch him, he’s full of summer magic, he’ll burn you.”

“Stop,” Yuri manages to gasp, but the arms—they’re arms, not straps; just arms—around him tighten. “Stop, _please_ , stop!”

“Shh, little thief,” someone whispers into his hair as Yuri writhes and sobs. “Just a little longer.”

“Stop,” Yuri says again, but the pain is already ebbing, and slowly, slowly it starts turning into something else. Warmth, and sunlight under his skin. Yuri knows this magic in his bones.

“Viktor,” he rasps, and Viktor laughs by his ear, long and haunting and achingly familiar. Yuri’s body sags, his relief a physical taste at the back of his mouth.

“Yes,” Viktor says. “Hold still now.”

_Fuck you_ , Yuri wants to shout, and, _where have you been_ , but he can’t. He wants to cry. Viktor is here. Viktor didn’t send Mila, or Zhora. He came for Yuri.

Opening his eyes is another struggle, but Viktor’s magic helps, warming him down to his toes and numbing his leg, and when he blinks away the haze of pain and summer magic Viktor is smiling down at him, so radiant it dizzies Yuri.

“Hello, little thief,” Viktor says, so quiet Yuri almost doesn’t hear him. His hair tumbles messily over his shoulders like the first day they met, stark against his brown skin and tickling Yuri’s face. Yuri’s whole body tilts towards the clean, summer scent of his skin, and that’s when he realizes that there’s something wrapped around him.

It’s a coat, long and thick, fur-trimmed and lined with frost. Yuri knows this coat. He has seen it exactly twice, and neither was a pleasant experience.

“You should take him back to the summer lands; he’s too weak here,” says the Winter King, and Yuri flinches from his voice before he can stop himself.

The Winter King seems different, here in what is clearly his domain. Out of his trim, regal coat, Yuri can see his belly spilling over the waist of his pants. He doesn’t seem any more intimidating than usual with the tall staff in his hand, so plain and pale that Yuri thinks he might fade into the snow if Yuri blinked.

Yuri presses closer to Viktor’s warmth, and doesn’t blink. He’s seen the Winter King like this before, pretending at soft and harmless. Yuri knew better then, and he knows better now. The world moves sluggishly around him, still too cold to function, but Yuri’s hindbrain is on high alert, screaming _danger_ at him like it used to for Viktor.

He unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Am I trespassing?” he whispers to Viktor, and if his voice shakes a little he can pretend it’s just the cold.

Viktor doesn’t reply, but he cups the back of Yuri’s head in his hand protectively, and there it is again, the instinctive knowledge that he’s _safe_. Yuri didn’t know this feeling before—before he left. Before he was fey.

Something has shifted fundamentally here, but Yuri is tired and scared and he doesn’t have the energy to puzzle out the rules of the fey, not now. He lets himself take the comfort from Viktor, and does his best not to shake apart.

Viktor pets his hair absently, raising his eyes to look at the Winter King. The loss of his attention makes the world seem—less bright.

“I owe you again,” Viktor tells the Winter King, an unfamiliar cadence to his voice that Yuri has never heard before. His smile is no longer for Yuri; it’s small, and honest, and devastatingly beautiful. It changes his whole face.

“Never,” the Winter King says softly. “You will never owe me, Viktor.”

Yuri looks between them, at the way the Winter King makes an aborted attempt to step towards Viktor, and faces the slow, seeping realization that he _is_ trespassing. That he _has been_ trespassing, from the moment he put his gift around Viktor’s neck and stole Viktor, not only for himself, but from the _Winter King_.

_As better thieves have before you_ , Viktor told him. Yuri knows now who he meant.

It’s not the cold that makes him shiver, but Viktor’s eyes snap back to Yuri immediately. He’s _attentive_ today, like he’s never been before.

“Can you stand, little thief?” he asks, but Yuri is distracted. The Winter King doesn’t move, his face doesn’t change, but there was a light in his kind eyes when Viktor smiled at him that’s no longer there.

_This was not my fault_ , Yuri thinks at him desperately, but for all their magic, the fey can’t read minds. If they could, Yuri would never have gotten this far.

“Very well, then,” Viktor says after a moment, and before Yuri can open his mouth Viktor swings him up into his arms, swaddled in the Winter King’s coat like a baby. Yuri squawks in protest, but it’s mostly instinct; Viktor is warm, and Yuri’s eyes are tired and heavy.

“Are we going home?” the words scrape his throat like sandpaper. He muffles a cough in the thin material of Viktor’s shift and feels gross, but Viktor doesn’t seem to mind.

“We’re going someplace warm,” he promises. It’s good enough. Yuri never wants to see snow ever again.

Viktor stands smoothly, like Yuri doesn’t weigh anything at all, and glances at the Winter King, waiting on them patiently. Viktor’s smile is wider now, the careful intimacy between them shattered.

“I’m afraid I have to borrow your coat,” he says with practiced ease. “I will return it to you soon.”

A flicker of annoyance passes over the Winter King’s face. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he says. “I’ll send one of my fey with your husband’s cane.”

Viktor pauses, surprised, and Yuri barely manages to smothers a bout of hysterical laughter. _Husband_. The Winter King is giving Viktor a none-too-subtle _reminder_ , like any of them can possibly forget the gold medal sitting pretty at Viktor’s breast, gleaming in the light.

“As you wish,” Viktor says, perfectly calm, but his wings rustle behind him. His bare feet are muddy on the ground where the snow has melted around them both. “If you can’t, I will send one of mine.”

The Winter King doesn’t reply, and doesn’t move when Viktor steps forward. He lets Viktor brush their arms together, and when Yuri cranes his head over Viktor’s shoulder his eyes are closed, like he can’t bear to watch Viktor go.

Viktor doesn’t turn around. Yuri could say something, probably, but the fey don’t like apologies, and they like meaningless words of gratitude even less. More than that, Yuri just can’t bring himself to _care_.

He’s alive. It’s more than he could have hoped for. Yuri leans his head against Viktor’s chest and lets himself be warm, and safe, and glad.

 

 

 

The next time he opens his eyes, he’s in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room, covers kicked down to his feet and armpits damp from the heat. Yuri blinks blearily at the ceiling and rolls over, looking through the window where it’s gone dark. He thinks, _dedulya will be worried_.

There’s a soft whuff from beside the bed, and Yuri rolls over again to see Yakov’s big, old dog wagging her tail at him from the floor. She stands and pads over when Yuri reaches out, and puts her paws on the bed to let him pet her.

“Angara,” Yuri says, and she licks his fingers, tongue lolling out in a stupid, happy dog grin. Yuri’s shoulder relax, reassured, and he sits up to look around. The bed creaks under him.

He’s never been in this room before. His childhood was spent on the couch in the living room, surrounded by walls decorated with pressed four-leaf clovers and marigolds, or in the kitchen, watching Yakov throw spilled salt over his shoulder as he talked about his old life in Moscow.

Yakov’s bedroom is different. There are no wind chimes at the window, or iron pokers leaned against the corners of the walls. Yakov hangs rowan at his front door and puts bread and milk out at night, but there is no protection where he sleeps.

“Angara,” Yuri says again, and muffles a cough in the crook of his arm. He’s probably caught a cold. “Is Yakov here?”

Angara turns back towards the door, spilling light into the bedroom from the hall. Yuri’s leg doesn’t hurt, but he uses both hands to swing it off the bed anyway, and uses the nightstand for support to stand. His cane is missing. He remembers leaving it with the Winter King.

Pieces of conversation drift from in the kitchen as he edges down the hall. Yuri presses his back against the wall and peers around the corner, because he knows both those voices.

Viktor is sitting in Yakov’s kitchen like he belongs there, arms folded over the back of a chair and wings shivering golden dust onto the floor. There’s an angry, blistering burn on the bare skin of his left shoulder; Yuri can’t remember if it was there when Viktor came for him. Yakov sits across from Viktor with his wrinkled hands wrapped around a steaming mug, unconcerned by the faerie king sitting at his table.

It’s such a strange sight that Yuri rubs his eyes to make sure he isn’t imagining it, but when he looks again, Viktor is still there, and Yakov is still unafraid.

“He wants to stay, I think,” Viktor says absently. “I hope he does. It gets so messy when they don’t want to stay.”

Yuri stares, startled. They’re talking about _him_.

Yakov takes a long sip from his mug, then pushes it towards Viktor. Viktor reaches out to cup it in his hands, taking the offering without a second thought.

“You’re so careless,” Yakov scolds, once Viktor has put down the mug. Like this, licking white foam off his upper lip and blinking innocently at Yakov’s disgruntled face, Yuri can almost think of what Viktor would have been as a little boy, with skinned knees and a toothy smile that could get him out of any trouble. But Viktor is fey, and fey don’t grow up as humans do. Viktor might look innocent and young at Yakov’s table, but he isn’t. Yuri can’t forget that.

He also can’t forget, now, that Yakov lied to him. Yuri spent over a month trying to get the fey to take his treasures. Viktor must know Yakov very well, to be willing to drink at his table.

“If you really want to do this, at least take it seriously,” Yakov says. “He went chasing after _you_. What would you have done if you had not found him in time?”

Yuri expects Viktor to get angry, but all he does is smile, indulgent and fond. “But I did find him,” he says, and Yakov puts his head in his hands.

“One day,” Yakov says despairingly. “You will not be so lucky. What will you do then, Vitya?”

_Vitya_. Yuri hasn’t heard anyone else call Viktor that. The diminutive doesn’t suit the Summer King. It’s too familiar. Too—human.

Viktor doesn’t seem to mind. He laughs, low and cruel, and Yuri flinches instinctively.

“Lucky,” Viktor muses, smiling with too many teeth. “Is that what I’ve been?”

Yuri thought he was. Viktor the Summer King, with his peaceful Court full of beautiful summer fey who dance for the joy of it every day. _“The King does what he wants,”_ Mila told Yuri, but Yuri knows now that _want_ means something different, for the fey. If Viktor could do what he _wanted_ , he would never have walked away from the Winter King. He would never have let Yuri put his medal around his neck, or let Yuri see his face when he truly smiled.

Yakov looks at him for a long moment, eyes terribly sad. Yuri doesn’t know how Yakov knows Viktor, but Yuri’s grandfather looked at him like that, in the early days of his recovery when he thought Yuri wouldn’t notice.

“I know that boy, Vitya,” Yakov says slowly, carefully. “He would release you in a heartbeat, if you asked.”

Yuri’s heart speeds up; he presses his back harder against the wall. _Yes_ , he thinks. _Ask me_.

If Yuri gave Viktor something he wants, it might balance the scales. Yuri would be unmarried, and free, and he could—

He could—

He could what? What would he do? Go back to Toronto or St. Petersburg where he no longer belongs? Live alone in a cottage on the hill like Yakov the Liar? Taking his medal back from Viktor won’t undo what has been done.

In the kitchen, Viktor ducks his head. “Summer is stronger this year than it has been in decades,” he says quietly. “My fey are happy.”

Yakov’s forehead creases. “If that is what you want,” he says, and Yuri bites his lip so hard he draws blood.

Viktor’s eyes flick to the door like he can smell it. Yuri yanks his head back, but he’s too slow.

“I forgot about the little thief’s cane,” Viktor says, rising to his feet. For someone who can’t lie, he’s awfully good at not telling the truth. “You should let him know why he can’t keep hiding from his grandfather.”

He’s not really talking to Yakov. Yuri hides around the corner and scowls at the wall, because marching in there and yelling at Viktor wouldn’t achieve anything, probably. The back door of the house opens and closes. Yuri knows without looking that Viktor is gone.

“Well, Yura?” Yakov calls eventually, and Yuri startles. “Are you going to come in?”

Yuri feels chastised, then remembers that he shouldn’t feel guilty about eavesdropping when Yakov was the one _hiding_ things from him, and raises his chin. There are two other chairs around Yakov’s small kitchen table, but Yuri painstakingly turns around the one Viktor abandoned, and sits down facing Yakov. He has to clear his throat twice before he can speak.

“You lied to me,” he says.

Yakov takes Viktor’s empty mug, and gets up slowly. He doesn’t put it in the sink. He refills it at the stove, then puts it back down in front of Yuri.

“What is this?” Yuri demands. “Some strange faerie ritual that you _also_ never thought to tell me about?”

Yakov sighs a long-suffering sigh. The way he looks at Yuri is little different from how he looked at Viktor, like Yuri is trying the last of his patience. “It is hospitality, child. That is all.”

Yuri squints at his mug suspiciously, and pushes it back at him. “You first,” he says. Yakov turns his eyes heavenwards, but takes a sip before returning it to Yuri.

“It’s safe,” he says, because he knows Yuri is only copying what he saw from Viktor. “I would not harm you, you know that.”

He may be angry right now, but Yuri does know that. He sets his jaw and takes a drink. It should be too hot for warm milk, but it soothes his itching throat.

“Does Viktor not know that?” he asks when he’s drained the mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Yakov purses his lips, but there aren’t any napkins for Yuri to use anyway.

“Viktor is rightfully wary of people who are not bound by the same rules as he is,” Yakov says. “Our kind have not been good to the fey, and certainly not to him.”

The easiest way to catch a faerie, Yuri has heard, is to drug the milk you put out at night. Some stories talk of stealing fey wings and selkie skin, and faerie brides who sing from the prison of their husbands’ homes.

“Do I have to be careful now, too?” Yuri asks. Yakov doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Yuri means.

“Yes,” he says. “You will be in more danger than most. Thousands know your name.”

Yuri’s mind shies away from the thought that one day the people who know his name will all be dead. He sucks his bitten lip into his mouth and tastes the coppery blood, white-knuckled fingers curled around his empty mug.

“Why didn’t you ever _tell_ me?” he asks, eyes burning because he never should have put his faith in Yakov’s stories. “You knew—you _knew_ this whole time. You knew what would happen to me, and you just. You _let me do this_.”

He takes a breath, and says, “You lied to me.”

After months of only accruing debt, there is no question Yuri can ask now that will be bigger than the weight of Yakov’s lies. Yakov _owes_ him. The knowledge sits firm in Yuri’s chest, reassuring in its freedom.

Yakov looks at him for a long moment, assessing. There’s something wary in his eyes, like he’s just now taking stock of the fact that Yuri can hold him accountable, like any other faerie could.

“I warned you, Yura,” he says deliberately, and Yuri’s back goes up. _Yura_ doesn’t have the same power as _Yuri_ , but it’s still his name in the mouth of someone he no longer trusts. “You did not listen.”

“You didn’t tell me everything you could have,” Yuri returns, furious. “You _know_ my _husband_.”

Yakov doesn’t deny it. “I told you before,” he says. “You are not the first skater to seek help from the fey.”

Yuri sits back. “But you didn’t succeed,” he says, and Yakov’s shoulders curve inward. His lined face suddenly looks every inch of his eighty-plus years.

“The fey would not come to me,” he says. “I waited sixty days and nights, and did not see a glimpse of even a sprite. I stopped believing they existed, and when I went home the Summer King was at my doorstep, waiting for me to invite him inside. He was very young, then.”

He smiles at Yuri wistfully. “You have always reminded me of him. Perhaps that is why Summer chose you.”

“That’s stupid,” Yuri shrinks back from him, heart hammering in his chest. “I’m nothing like Viktor.”

Yakov picks up Yuri’s empty mug and goes to the stove, stopping at the cupboard to find a fresh mug. Yuri wipes his eyes while Yakov’s back is turned.

“Why did Viktor come to you?” he asks suspiciously as Yakov comes back and pushes his mug back towards him. It’s warm under his hands.

“I didn’t ask questions, Yura,” Yakov says, ignoring the way Yuri flinches minutely at the sound of his name. He takes a long drink. “I grew up with stories of the fey, like you. If he did not want my treasures, I had nothing else to offer him in return for his answers. I suspect he came because he wanted to. Back then, the Summer King really did do as he pleased. He was happy, and unafraid. He made Summer strong.”

He glances at Yuri significantly, and Yuri remembers Viktor saying, _Summer is stronger this year than it has been in decades._ Summer is happiness, and whimsy. When Yuri was upset, it rained and stormed for a month.

Yuri wants to know more, but Yakov is not the one he should ask. Viktor will return, whether he wants to or not.

“Your bedroom is unprotected,” he says quietly into his mug. He thought it might always have been that way, and then when he saw Viktor he thought it was for him. But Viktor is a monarch. Iron and marigold wouldn’t stop him. “That was for me.”

Yakov reaches over the table to put a wrinkled hand over Yuri’s. “When Viktor brought you here, you were so pale, and still,” he says. “He waited outside with you while I took down the wind chimes and clovers. You were too weak from the cold; the iron would have killed you. What were you _thinking_ , you foolish child? You could have died!”

Yuri blinks at him in surprise. “But I didn’t,” he says, a foreign, unshakable conviction settling deep in his gut. “I knew my fey would come for me.”

Yakov snatches his hand back, clouded blue eyes widening. He looks almost dismayed, but he should be glad for it, Yuri thinks. Yakov’s concern is a payment greater than his answers, and if he keeps this up, his debt will be forgiven in no time at all.

Yuri uses the table to push to his feet, his milk untouched this time. He is not Viktor, and he can choose to not drink at Yakov the Liar’s table.

“Does my grandfather know where I am?” he asks. His grandfather’s house is lined with iron too; that’s probably why Viktor didn’t take him there instead.

Yakov presses his lips together. Yuri thinks he won’t answer, but Yakov is better trained than Yuri ever was, and he didn’t gain Viktor’s trust by being rude to the fey.

“I let him know you were staying the night in my home,” he says carefully. “Yura, you should tell him.”

Yuri grits his teeth. “If Viktor wants me to talk to my grandfather,” he raises his voice, just in case there’s a summer faerie on patrol. “He can tell me that himself.”

Yakov, mercifully, doesn’t argue. Yuri doesn’t know what he would have done if Yakov tried to stop him, with white-hot rage simmering just below his skin. He stumbles towards the screen door leading out of the kitchen and into the backyard. His leg doesn’t hurt, still brimming with Viktor’s magic, but it’s unlikely that he’ll make it to his grandfather’s house under his own power.

It doesn’t matter, Yuri tells himself. He’ll crawl if he has to, but he won’t stay here.

He’s almost at the threshold when he thinks to stop. Yakov has been polite, and accommodating. Yuri has slept in his home.

He takes a deep breath. The words flow easier than he thought they would, because they’re honest, and honesty is simple for the fey.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Yuri says formally, and feels more than sees Yakov react, his shock a visceral, satisfying thing.

Yuri pushes the screen door open, and limps out into the night.

 

 

 

Viktor is waiting for him outside. Yuri squints at his empty hands.

“Where’s my cane?” he asks, and Viktor blinks at him.

“Oh,” he says. “I must have forgotten.”

“Must have,” Yuri parrots skeptically, balancing on his good leg. He coughs into his arm, just once. “Of course.”

There’s a long piece of bread balanced over a bowl of milk on the ground next to Yuri’s feet. Viktor hasn’t touched it. Yuri wonders if a summer fey will come for it at dawn, or if a dark fey will take it away during the night.

“You came looking for me,” Viktor says suddenly, and Yuri looks up at him. His blue eyes are shadowed, pale hair wrapped elegantly around his head where it was loose before. Viktor toys with his hair when he’s bored, or nervous, or frustrated. Yuri can’t tell which he is now.

“So did you,” he says. Viktor smiles at that, oddly sweet.

“Come, little thief,” he says, and steps forward to take Yuri’s arm. Like this, side by side, Viktor is only a few inches taller, and when Yuri leans his weight on him Viktor doesn’t falter. “I will take you home.”

 

 

 

Potya won’t come to them at all. He hisses at Viktor, who dismisses her after a curious glance, and glares balefully at Yuri from the kitchen as he limps into the house. Viktor makes him stand against the wall as he goes through Yuri’s room, picking apart all of his grandfather’s carefully placed charms and steel. This is not a job for the Summer King, but Viktor’s smile is excited as he tears away the marigold and clovers. He looks like he’s having fun.

The steel cane hidden under his bed goes out the window. Yuri will never use it after all.

Finally, when the rest of the protection has gone through the window or been dumped in the hall, Viktor helps Yuri inside and holds him steady as he undresses, not bothering to look away. Then he leads Yuri to the bed and steps away as Yuri sits heavily on his soft, clean sheets, an expanse of space between them.

“Chasing me was reckless,” Viktor tells him, trying to open his wings and starting when they brush the windowsill. Viktor will never belong in Yuri’s human home, even if Yuri decided to trap him here with the medal around his neck.

Yuri’s leg refuses to bend. He uses both hands to lift it onto the mattress. “Your games are annoying.”

Viktor dissolves into laughter. Yuri flinches, but it’s only a honed reflex. The sound of Viktor’s laughter is as haunting as it’s always been, but it doesn’t make the hair stand on Yuri’s arms anymore. Yuri almost rubs his eyes to make sure it’s still the same faerie standing in the middle of his room, bright wings cramped against the walls.

Viktor shakes his head, lips stretched into a wide, stupid grin. It’s not even pretty. “I thought you were _boring_ ,” he says, sliding a hand into his hair. The elegant braids fall apart messily around his face, but he barely seems to notice. “I thought you’d get tired and give up, or just sit there and wait for me, or want to leave. But you _chased me down_.”

He looks so delighted that Yuri wants to kick him. Yuri doesn’t see what’s funny. “I owed you a debt,” he says sourly, and Viktor bites down on a smile, eyes bright with mirth.

His voice is light when he asks, “Do you really wish to stay with me, little thief?”

_With me_. Maybe for the first time, that’s not a trap. Yuri knows the answer, but he doesn’t know if he’s ready to say it out loud.

“We weren’t like this before,” he says instead, gesturing to the space between him and Viktor that feels _safe_ even though every form of protection Yuri has ever believed in is gone, and Viktor is no less dangerous than when Yuri left. “Something changed, while I was gone.”

Viktor’s smile flickers and changes. The loss of his happiness is a tangible thing, sucking the light out of the room. Yuri rubs at his chest with one hand and thinks, this must be how the summer fey feel.

“Summer chose you for me,” Viktor replies, like Yuri asked him a question. “And now you have chosen me for yourself. We are bound, you and I.”

“Are we?” Yuri wants to know. The need to make Viktor happy again is not so strong that he can’t shove it away. “Or are you going to keep pretending it’s just you who’s had to give up what he wants?”

Nothing changes in Viktor’s face, but his wings rustle noisily at his back. “Are you calling me _selfish_ , little thief?” he asks, deceptively neutral. He’s half a step away from the vicious, terrifying anger that sent Yuri running from the forest and then the country altogether, but this time Yuri stays where he is. He’s had to be careful for a very long time, but now he knows. Viktor is just as obligated to him as Yuri is to Viktor.

“Yeah,” he says, ignoring the blood rushing in his ears. “I am.”

Viktor’s smile disappears entirely. “I said I wouldn’t chase you,” he says, low and dangerous, but the hair doesn’t stand on the back of Yuri’s neck. “I didn’t. You wanted to be healed, I helped your pain. You _lied_ to me—”

“And I paid for it,” Yuri lifts his chin. The fey are tactile creatures, but Viktor stands with enough space between them that Yuri couldn’t reach out to him and touch his skin. Viktor’s arms are wrapped around himself, shoulders curled defensively and wings fluttering behind his back. Yuri is not the one who fucked up this time. “I tried to abandon you, and I paid for that, too. I nearly _died_ looking for you.”

“I didn’t ask you to come after me!” For the first time since they met, Viktor raises his voice, pretty face twisted with raw, ugly emotions. Yuri stares at him with naked disbelief.

“I didn’t ask you to take away my pain. I didn’t ask you to protect me. I didn’t fucking _ask_ you to take my medal!” He jabs his finger towards Viktor’s chest, and Viktor shrinks back, like he’s afraid Yuri will try to snatch it away. “I didn’t want you! I didn’t want any of this, but I came back!”

“And you think _I_ wanted this?” Viktor raises his eyebrows, going from furious to disdainful so fast he gives Yuri whiplash. “Do you think _I_ asked to be chained to you, little thief?”

“I never meant to chain you!” Yuri shouts back, fists clenched in his sheets and wishing desperately for his cane. “Neither of us had a choice, but at least I tried to _do_ something about it instead of moping around! You need me!”

Viktor draws short, blue eyes flashing. He opens his mouth, then closes it, unable to find a response for that that won’t be a lie. Yuri looks at the way he stands distanced and apart in the center of Yuri’s room, wound so tight he’s almost vibrating and unable to let it out, to scream or shout or _hit_ something without affecting all his fey, and suddenly feels terribly sorry for him.

Summer is so limiting. The only thing Viktor is allowed to be without consequence, is happy.

“I do need you,” Viktor admits finally, quietly, _painfully_. For the first time since they met, Viktor’s perfect form sags and crumples. “I need you to be happy, so my fey can be happy. So tell me, what do you want?”

Yuri curls his fingers tighter in his sheets. “I want to stay with you,” he says, raw and aching. “I want. They’re my fey now too. I want them to be happy.”

_I want you to be happy_ , he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t know if that’s him or Summer talking.

“I want to help you,” he says.

“Help me,” Viktor says, soft like a revelation. Yuri wants to punch somebody. Viktor is _beloved_ , by Summer and his fey and the Winter King, and he’s looking at Yuri like no one has ever offered him anything as simple as this.

“You said we were bound,” Yuri tells him, heart in his throat. “We could be married.”

Viktor’s eyes go bright with wonder. He takes a single, teetering step towards Yuri, then hesitates. Yuri feels the three feet of space between them like a yawning chasm as Viktor backs away again.

“There are rules,” he tells Yuri. His hand touches Yuri’s medal on his chest. “Duties, and obligations.”

“Then _teach me_ ,” Yuri leans forward to meet Viktor’s eyes. “I’m not the only one who’s been running away. You’re supposed to be a king, but you haven’t been _fair_.”

Viktor makes an aborted motion to cover the red burn on his arm with his hand. He’s quiet for a long moment, then he asks, “What about your human?”

Yuri swallows, hard. “My grandfather is here,” he says, and regrets it instantly, because Viktor’s face shutters. Of course Viktor won’t let him get away with that, Viktor who is married to Yuri and in love with the Winter King.

“Your human,” Viktor repeats, warning, and Yuri looks away. The correct answer would be that it doesn’t matter, but the words stick in Yuri’s throat.

“I don’t know,” he admits. It shouldn’t be good enough, but Viktor’s shoulders relax, like Yuri’s honesty is all he was looking for.

“Of all the things you could have had,” he murmurs, so soft Yuri isn’t sure he’s meant to hear. “You really want to try for this.”

Yuri steels his nerves and raises his eyes. “I’m not the Winter King,” he says. “I’m _tired_ of being afraid.”

A strange look passes over Viktor’s face, too fast for Yuri to interpret, but before he can panic, Viktor is in front of him, dropping to his knees on the wooden floor. He carefully uncurls Yuri’s sore fingers from the bedsheets, and gathers them together in Yuri’s lap.

Yuri lets him, eyes drawn to the blister puffing down the edge of Viktor’s shoulder and down his forearm. It looks like the early stages of frostbite.

“What happened to your arm?” Yuri asks, watching Viktor’s dark fingers stand out stark against his pale skin. Viktor pauses.

“You and I are Summer,” he says. “We can’t touch the Winter King.”

Yuri vaguely remembers Viktor brushing past the Winter King with Yuri in his arms. He doesn’t remember if they touched, but they must have.

“Can,” Yuri starts, then clears his throat. “Can he touch us?”

Viktor takes away his hands, and looks up at Yuri. He’s shorter this way; Yuri has to tilt his head down to meet his eyes.

“No,” Viktor says.

There’s not a thing Yuri can say to him now that won’t sound like pity. Yuri can still touch Otabek.

He viciously stomps down that train of thought. He can’t think of Otabek, not now, not with the Summer King on his knees in front of him.

Viktor presses the tips of his fingers to Yuri’s calf, sending a small pulse of warm summer magic through him, like he knows Yuri’s attention has strayed. When Yuri blinks at him he smiles, small and unamused.

“Are you sure, little thief?” he asks, like it’s the last chance Yuri will have to say no. Yuri meets his steely blue eyes, washed out by the electric light in a way they never are in the sun, and realizes that it very well might be.

“Yura,” he says, because it’s the only thing he has left to offer. “I am Yura.”

“Yura,” Viktor murmurs, like he’s tasting it on his tongue, and Yuri’s final gift must be enough because he picks up Yuri’s hands again and rearranges them carefully, cupping them together, palms up.

Then he places his hands in the space in between.

Yuri stops breathing. He may not fully understand the fey just yet, but even he can see the gesture for what it is. He wants to pull away, but he can’t. He wants to run away, but he can’t, because Viktor is _smiling_ at him, breathtaking and wonderful and nothing like his beautiful, perfect smiles, or the terribly honest thing he saves for the Winter King.

This smile is tentative, and cautious. It belongs to Yuri.

 

 

 

The fey don’t say thank you in so many words. Viktor sits on the floor at Yuri’s feet, and throws his magic into Yuri’s body to try and heal the damage left by the Dark King. By the time he’s done all that he can, Yuri’s eyes are heavy with pleasure and sleep. Viktor laughs at him a little, but Yuri has no energy to spare to be annoyed. He snags Viktor’s wrist as Viktor rises to his feet.

“Wait,” he says. “Wait.”

For the first time, it’s Viktor who holds still as Yuri closes the distance between them, and kisses his mouth. When he pulls away, Viktor touches his lips, eyes big with wonder.

“Oh,” he breathes softly, and Yuri’s traitorous heart skips a beat.

“Goodnight, Viktor,” he says, shaky with the knowledge of what they’ve begun. “Tomorrow is another day.”

Viktor falls silent for a long moment, like he doesn’t know what to say. Then he reaches down to stroke his fingers through Yuri’s hair, just once.

“Yes,” he says, and goes.

 

 

 

Yuri coughs himself awake.

There’s no evidence that a faerie was ever in his room save for the chimes gone from his window and the iron no longer lining the walls, but Yuri’s cane is leaning by his bed within easy reach. Yuri wraps his fingers around it and thinks of Viktor’s lips against his own, and the promises he made that he shouldn’t have.

He can’t bring himself to regret a single one.

 

 

 

His grandfather doesn’t say a word as they eat breakfast. He doesn’t ask why Yuri is home when he should have been at Yakov’s house, or where he went yesterday. He doesn’t even ask how Yuri developed the hacking cough he woke up with. It’s impossible that he didn’t hear strange voices last night, when Yuri and Viktor forgot themselves and shouted each other down, and even more impossible that he didn’t notice the charms littering the ground outside. Potya refuses to leave the kitchen even when Yuri’s grandfather tries to lure him away with treats.

Yuri waits with bated breath for him to say something when he limps out of the house with a thermos full of hot tea for his throat and his backpack slung over his shoulder, but his grandfather only waves goodbye with kind eyes.

“Come home, Yurotchka,” he says.

“Yeah,” Yuri says, a little surprised, but mostly just pleased that he can put this conversation off for a while longer. A little more time, and he’ll be ready. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Tonight,” his grandfather agrees, like he knows it’s a promise.

 

 

 

This time, there is no Mila, or Zhora. It’s Viktor waiting for him just beyond the treeline, standing tall and straight like he didn’t last night. For once, he doesn’t smile radiantly when he sees Yuri.

_Okay_ , Yuri thinks. At least he’s not the only one trying honesty on for size.

“Are we going to our Court?” Yuri asks, following Viktor down the path, glad that Viktor never offers to take his backpack or help him walk. The summer fey are good at leaving him alone in the ways that matter.

Viktor glances at him with some surprise; he’s probably never had to _share_ his Court before. “Not today,” he says. “There wouldn’t be anything to do.”

Yuri wonders what the fey do at Court, other than dance. The language barrier will be a problem for him when Viktor allows him to get involved in Court, but Yuri was a competitive athlete. He had to learn on his feet then, he can learn on his feet now.

It’s strange, thinking of the life he gave everything to in the past tense, but it feels so far away. Time seems to move quicker, when he’s with the fey.

Viktor stops at a point deeper within the forest than Yuri normally goes, but not as deep as he went yesterday. There are no faerie circles around them, only a small clearing with sun-dappled grass, surrounded by tall trees. Viktor drops to his stomach without ceremony, stretching out in the sun. His wings spread at his back, large and luxurious.

“What, we’re not doing anything at all?” Yuri demands, hobbling up to Viktor and stomping his cane on the ground in front of his face. “I thought you were going to show me things!”

Viktor waves lazily at the space before him, and actually rolls his eyes when Yuri doesn’t sit. It’s the most human expression Yuri has ever seen on his face, exasperated like he’s never let himself be in front of Yuri before. Yuri is startled enough that he takes a full step back before he catches himself.

“Are we really just going to _sit_ here?” he asks again, a little too loud. His voice scratches at his throat and he has to cough into his arm. Viktor puts his chin in his hands, watching him curiously.

“Did you catch a cold, Yura?” he asks innocently, and Yuri sucks a breath in through his teeth, pulse quickening at the sound of his name in Viktor’s mouth.

Viktor looks at him like he knows exactly what’s going through Yuri’s mind, no more pretense. Yuri should be frightened at this honesty, but some part of him is glad for it, at the way Viktor doesn’t bother to be pretty as he sprawls over the grass.

“Why are we here?” Yuri wants to know, because Viktor has not yet earned an answer. “Did you just bring me here for your amusement, because in that case, I can go.”

“So impatient,” Viktor sighs, then waves for Yuri to sit again. “I’ll tell you if you sit.”

“I’ll sit if you tell me,” Yuri counters, and Viktor’s brows come down for a moment in a display of naked frustration. His face smooths out almost instantly, but Yuri knows enough now to be aware that he was granted a rare privilege.

For that, he sits. Viktor rewards him with a quick, bitten-down smile.

“You must have questions,” he says. “All the things you want to know, I will tell you today. No tricks.”

Yuri stares at him. It’s a very generous offer, kinder still from the Summer King, who knows more than any other summer fey ever will. But Yuri has learned his lesson about asking the fey questions when he can’t pay the price.

“I can’t afford it,” he says carefully, and is startled when Viktor laughs, loud and delighted. His nose crinkles unprettily when he laughs like that, mouth opening so wide it swallows half his face.

Yuri looks at him and wonders if there will be a price for this, too. He could live a thousand years and not be able to pay the debt for seeing the Summer King allow himself to be ugly.

Viktor reaches out to take Yuri’s hand where it’s lying in his lap. His arm is black with frostbite from yesterday, spreading down his shoulder and wrapping around his skin. Damage caused by a monarch, it won’t heal on its own.

Viktor grins at him, amusement still bright in his eyes. He doesn’t seem to be in pain. “You don’t owe me, Yura,” he says, and squeezes Yuri’s hand. “You will never owe me again.”

“What?” Yuri says, mind flashing to the Winter King. _You will never owe me_ , he told Viktor, just like Viktor told Yuri before he ran, _I will not exact the price for your questions_. The fey can forgive debts, Yuri knows, but he has incurred a hefty sum.

“Your debt was paid when you decided to stay,” Viktor says gently, like he knows, again, what Yuri wants to ask. Yuri wonders for a split second if monarchs can read minds, but everything would have been so much simpler if Viktor had known his lies from the start.

“All of it?” Yuri breathes, and realizes his misstep immediately. Viktor changes in front of his eyes, drawing into himself with suspicion and his good humor dissipating like it was never there. He starts to pull away, but Yuri tightens his hold.

“No,” he snaps, fury surging through him at the disdain on Viktor’s face. How dare Viktor doubt his word. Yuri is _fey_ , like him. He doesn’t lie.

“I made you a promise,” Yuri says, gripping Viktor’s hand so hard he feels bones shift under his fingers. “I said I would _stay_. I’m not going to run just because I don’t _owe_ you anymore.”

“Have you told your grandfather?” Viktor wants to know, and Yuri falters. Viktor pulls his hand free. “I believe that you want to stay now, _Yura_ , but you have family in that world, and friends. You will go back to them if they ask.”

“I offered you companionship,” Yuri says stubbornly, even though he knows Viktor is right. If his grandfather told him to never go back, Yuri might pack his bags and move them back to St. Petersburg for the next twenty, forty years. If _Otabek_ asked, Yuri might never come back.

Viktor doesn’t disagree. “You want to make my fey happy,” he says. “That’s enough.”

Yuri doesn’t believe him, not really. It may be enough for Summer, it may even be enough for their fey, when Viktor brings Yuri to Court on his arm. But it won’t be enough for Viktor, who stands apart from his fey, burns at the Winter King’s touch, and leans into Yuri’s hand only when it’s offered.

Viktor’s hair splays over the grass, close enough that Yuri only has to reach out to feel it against his skin. There’s a whorl at the top of his crown begging to be poked.

It probably says something about them both that Yuri folds his hands in his lap, and says, “You said you’d answer my questions.”

Viktor’s eyes crinkle at the corners, out of relief or amusement, Yuri doesn’t know him well enough to tell. “I did,” he says. “Do you know why I keep telling you to talk to your grandfather, Yura?”

Yuri narrows his eyes. “Why?”

“Because,” Viktor says with great relish. “You were gone for three days.”

 

 

 

Three days. Yuri still can’t understand it.

He remembers walking in the snow for what felt like forever. When he laid down on the ground, it felt like only a few minutes before Viktor was waking him up. If he checked his phone when he came back he might have noticed, but he didn’t. His grandfather wasn’t worried this morning; did he not notice either, like Yuri didn’t? Did Yakov talk to him? Does his grandfather _know?_

These are not answers Viktor will give him. “Time moves differently, when you step through the ring,” is all he says, and eventually Yuri is forced to move on. Viktor tells Yuri more about faerie rings instead, and the Summer Court. His eyes light up when he talks about the Dark King, even as he rests a hand on Yuri’s bad leg apologetically.

Yuri doesn’t ask about the Winter King, and Viktor doesn’t offer. Yuri does brush his fingers along the blackened bruise at the edge of Viktor’s shoulder, and Viktor freezes like a frightened stray cat, ready to bolt at the slightest wrong move. Yuri clasps his free hand around Viktor’s wrist, just to make sure he can’t, and after a long, tense minute, Viktor relaxes. He smiles at Yuri slowly, all teeth.

“I almost miss when you were afraid of me,” he says, tilting his head towards the place where his skin is white around Yuri’s fingers. Yuri relaxes his grip, but Viktor doesn’t pull away.

_I’m still afraid of you_ , Yuri wants to say, but that would be an untruth. There are many things he feels for Viktor now, but fear is no longer one of them. His debt is paid, and Viktor can’t hurt him without hurting himself.

“Tell me about the things I have to hide,” he says instead, and Viktor lays his head down on the grass and teaches Yuri the rules of the fey.

He doesn’t reach for Yuri’s bad leg.

 

 

 

At the end of the day, Viktor waits for Yuri to climb to his feet and holds out his cane. Yuri steps close and tilts his chin up for a kiss, and feels Viktor’s lips turn up against his mouth.

When he pulls away, Viktor’s eyes are almost white in the strange, liminal light.

“Goodnight, Yura,” he says. “Tomorrow is another day.”

Yuri is braver now than he was when he came. He raises his hand, and tucks a strand of pale hair behind Viktor’s ear. It’s coarser than he imagined.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “You will take me to Court.”

For half a second, Viktor’s brows crease with ill-concealed annoyance. Not even the Winter King gets to see this, Viktor’s beautiful face marred with imperfect emotions. Yuri thrills in the privilege.

“Goodnight, Viktor,” he says before Viktor can reply, and turns away.

 

 

 

Viktor didn’t stop him. The knowledge carries Yuri all the way back to the village, making his limp lighter and his tired legs quicker. Their marriage is still new and unwanted, brittle like thin glass, but Yuri thinks this time, it might not break.

 

 

 

It lasts until he checks his phone and finds the missed calls and texts, and a voicemail box that’s full.

_you better be alive plisetsky_ , says the latest text, from JJ of all people. _beka’s freaking out_. _call him_.

 

 

 

Otabek’s face pixelates in and out before it settles. Yuri bites at his fingernails, nervous like he hasn’t been since he was seventeen and he tugged Otabek down for their first kiss.

“Can you hear me? Yura?” Otabek says, and Yuri feels the shock of his name in Otabek’s mouth settle like lightning in his chest. Three days. It’s been three whole days since he spoke to Otabek, and he didn’t even notice.

“Yes,” he says belatedly, when he realizes Otabek is still waiting. “I—yeah, I can hear you.”

There are shadows under Otabek’s eyes that weren’t there when Yuri spoke to him three days ago. Yuri hasn’t texted, he hasn’t called. Last time they spoke, Otabek told him—

“Hi,” Yuri says, and it’s a miracle his voice doesn’t break. “I’m um, alive.”

“Alhamdulillah,” Otabek mutters fervently, and the naked relief on his face makes Yuri want to turn off the video feed and crawl under his covers. No one should ever make Otabek Altin look like that, but Yuri did, even though he didn’t mean to. “You talked to JJ.”

“I didn’t know,” Yuri blurts. It rings like a poor excuse in his ears, but it’s all he really has. “That it had been three days. I would’ve called you immediately if I’d known, but I’m still learning, and they still don’t tell me everything.”

“Wait,” Otabek cuts him off, something raw in his expression that Yuri’s never seen before, not when he first got injured, not when he didn’t call or text for months after, not even when he told Otabek no and explained why, all those nights ago in Otabek’s apartment.

“Wait,” Otabek says again. “Where have you been? You haven’t been answering your messages. JJ told me you called him, and I knew you had to have gone to find your—faeries—but what happened?”

_I was scared_ , he doesn’t say, but Yuri hears it loud and clear. He presses his fingertips to his laptop screen, like he can touch Otabek through it.

Yuri is so different now. Only a few days, but he can already feel his new identity settling in his bones.

“I went looking for Viktor,” he says, instead of, _I went looking for my husband_. “I got lost for a bit, but he found me.”

“Were you lost for three whole days?” Otabek presses, and this is the thing that Yuri’s choice has changed. Otabek is _testing_ him, to see if Yuri can lie, and he’s no longer willing to let Yuri get away with hiding.

It’s easy to see now, why Viktor is wary of humans. But Yuri was guilty of taking advantage of fey rules too, before he was one.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs at Otabek helplessly, torn between blurting out everything and the awareness that what happened in the snow is not his story to tell. “I thought it was the same day when I came back, but apparently not. To me, it feels like I just talked to you and JJ yesterday.”

The furrow between Otabek’s brows deepen, but he falls silent. Yuri knows that look; he’s seen Otabek wear it as he watched his competitors’ scores climb and changed his jump compositions in his head. Yuri never thought he’d see it directed towards him.

“Viktor found you,” Otabek repeats, watching him like a hawk. “Were you hurt?”

“Viktor didn’t hurt me,” Yuri offers, and knows immediately that he’s failed this test. That was not the answer Otabek was looking for. “We figured it out, Beka. I’m fine.”

“Right.” Otabek takes a breath, probably to ask another, even more specific question, and Yuri cuts him off before he can indebt himself further to a faerie who doesn’t know all the rules.

“Beka,” he says warningly, because he knows enough of Viktor and the Winter King to know that forgiving debts can have—consequences. “I’m fine. We’re working on it. There’s nothing more to know.”

Otabek is quiet for a long moment. “I see,” he says eventually. He looks so _tired_. Yuri wants to apologize, but he wouldn’t mean it, not really. “Is this how it’s going to be from now on?”

Otabek has been Yuri’s best and only friend since he was fifteen years old, alone at the top of the world until Otabek climbed up beside him and put his arm around Yuri’s shoulders. People came and went, coaches and choreographers and rinkmates, even JJ and Isabella once they found each other, but Otabek stayed.

Otabek deserves better from Yuri, but Yuri has so little to offer. Yuri has always had too little to offer Otabek.

“I don’t want it to be,” he says.

“Me neither,” Otabek says. “So how about you tell me everything you _can_ , and we’ll figure out the rest together.”

Yuri hides his face in his knees so he can surreptitiously wipe his eyes on his jeans. Sometimes he hates that Otabek can do this to him with only a few stupid words.

“Don’t you ever get _tired_ of me?” he muffles into his thighs, and Otabek snorts at him, loud through the speakers of his laptop. When Yuri peeks at the screen, he’s smiling fondly, the kind of smile that never fails to make Yuri’s cheeks heat up. This is one thing that _hasn’t_ changed.

“Don’t be stupid, Yura,” Otabek says, eyes warm and beautiful as any faerie king. “You’ll never be that boring.”

 

 

 

Not _boring_ , Yuri thinks, heating his leg with Potya sitting on the hot water bottle later that night, after a quiet, stilted dinner with his grandfather and a longer conversation with Otabek than they’ve had since Yuri left Toronto. Viktor said that too, standing tall and proud in Yuri’s room, indignation gathered around him like his wings. Yuri wonders if that means Viktor won’t get tired of him either.

 

 

 

Mila flits to his side and kisses his cheek, hands wrapping around his free arm like they belong there. “Welcome back, summer prince,” she says, and Yuri hears, _welcome home_. She’s lovelier than he remembers, so openly _happy_ to see him that Yuri can’t help but be flattered.

“The King asked me to bring you to Court,” she says when she sees him looking around, irritation already building at the lack of Viktor. Yuri raises his eyebrows, surprised that Viktor hasn’t found a way around Yuri’s—request—and Mila mistakes it for apprehension.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “Viktor has forgiven you; his Court will too.”

It’s no longer just Viktor’s Court, but Yuri doesn’t remind her just yet. He takes Mila’s hand and limps into the ring, and when he opens his eyes Viktor stands before him, as radiant and perfect as he always is in front of his fey.

“Mila,” is all he says, and Mila drops Yuri’s hand and disappears from his side, leaving a space for Viktor to step into seamlessly. Yuri can almost feel the effort it takes for him to stand so close.

“Shut up,” Yuri says before Viktor can ask him some stupid question that he _knows_ is coming. “Are we doing this or what?”

Viktor laughs, startled, and the tension drains from his body. Yuri is inordinately pleased, and then annoyed with himself for being pleased.

“Come on,” he says, resisting the urge to curl his fingers around Viktor’s wrist and trap him by Yuri’s side. Viktor didn’t make a promise, but Yuri remembers his visceral, furious reaction to being abandoned. No matter what he thinks of Yuri, Viktor won’t leave him to face this alone. “I have reparations to make.”

 

 

 

The Court fey are displeased with him, and they make no secret of it. They murmur discontentedly at Viktor in the strange fey tongue Yuri has fallen out of practice with, purposefully excluding him from the conversation. Viktor’s expression never changes, and while he doesn’t take a step away from Yuri’s side, he doesn’t stand up for Yuri, either.

Yuri is not as forgiven as he thought he was, apparently.

Eventually, one of the Court fey steps towards Yuri, jabbing at him with sharp, stick-like fingers and spitting venomous words. Yuri sees Mila glace between him and Viktor with trepidation, and he’s hit with the sudden realization that this, too, is a fucking _test_.

Yuri is _done_ with tests.

Viktor’s head is tilted towards him, watching him out of the corner of his eyes, and Yuri wants to punch him in the teeth, but he breathes through the instinctive rage and draws himself up to his full height.

“Speak my language, or shut up,” he snarls at the faerie, cutting him off mid-rant. Fuck this, and fuck being polite. Yuri is the _summer prince_ , and this is _his_ Court as much as it is Viktor’s.

“I don’t have to be here,” he reminds the now-quiet Court. “I didn’t have to come back; isn’t that what you were all afraid of? But I did, for _you_ , and if you’re not going to owe me for it, I think I at least deserve some basic fucking respect.”

“If we have nothing left to give you,” Zhora calls from the edge of the clearing, looking pointedly at Yuri’s cane. “How do we know you won’t abandon us again when you get bored, or afraid?”

“Viktor gets bored,” Yuri shoots back at him. “The Winter King was human once, and scared of all of you. They still stick around.”

Zhora shifts, darting his eyes between Yuri and Viktor like he’s waiting for a response, but Viktor keeps his mouth shut, a silent pillar of uselessness next to Yuri. This test is Yuri’s to pass or fail on his own.

“Summer chose me,” Yuri tells his Court. “I am married to your King. You are my fey now, and my responsibility. If I didn’t get a choice in how this shit would turn out, then _neither will you_.”

Viktor makes a soft sound at his shoulder, and when Yuri cranes his neck to look he snaps his head away, too late for Yuri to not see the crinkle at the corner of his eyes. He’s _amused_ , the asshole.

“This isn’t funny,” Yuri hisses in his direction, and Viktor explodes with laughter, bright and open and not pretty at all. It settles something in the space between them, and Yuri feels a knot unwind in his chest as their fey relax, smiles blooming even on the most inhuman faces.

Everything Yuri claimed and offered to prove, and all he needed to do in the end was make Viktor laugh. _Years_ , Viktor had said, sitting at Yakov’s table. Summer has been too weak for _years_. Yuri can feel Viktor’s happiness buoying him now; he wonders how long the summer fey felt the lack of it in their bones.

Viktor’s wings spread behind him, colors brilliant in the sun. They beat once, twice, and when they settle not a single eye in Court is turned Yuri’s way.

“So, what business do we have today?” Viktor claps his hands together cheerfully, and his advisors clamor around him, responding in kind, in a language Yuri understands.

It’s a strange show of support, but Yuri imagines this is new, to Viktor. There’s a space at Viktor’s side for him, created by the stretch of Viktor’s wings that not even his Court fey will dare touch, and when Yuri steps into it Viktor folds his wings away and rewards him with a brush of his frostbitten shoulder against Yuri’s arm.

“Pay attention,” Viktor tells him, lips shaping _Yura_ even though he doesn’t say it out loud, in front of fey who don’t quite trust him yet. It’s not Yuri’s true name; Viktor must know that it doesn’t hold the kind of power that could sway a faerie, but Yuri appreciates the gesture anyway.

“ _You_ pay attention,” he says, and it must come out more petulant than he intends, because Viktor snorts loudly, then looks surprised that he’s capable of making such an unseemly sound. His stupid face makes Yuri laugh.

Their fey titter and delight in their happiness. Fey memories are short, when amends have been made, and whether or not Viktor has forgiven him, Yuri feels the acceptance of the summer fey calm and wash away what was left of his anger, pouring through him as warm as summer magic.

 

 

 

Court is tiring. Yuri waves away the summer wine when the revelry begins, leg throbbing too hard to participate even though he yearns for it after so long, but Viktor puts a hand on his hip and takes away his pain.

“I owe you a dance,” he says, and takes Yuri’s hand. Viktor, who always disappears at the height of the revelry and never dances with anyone. Yuri blinks at him, shocked, but Viktor is already pulling him into the circle of twirling summer fey, smile sharp and wings like stained glass.

The world seems to shift around them, the grass greener and the sky bluer. The wind _sings_ in Yuri’s ears, and their Court follows. He doesn’t have to look around to know it has been too long since Viktor last danced for his fey, or that every faerie will look at Yuri differently tomorrow, when they know that he’s spun the Summer King in his arms.

Yuri is an internationally ranked athlete. He’s no stranger to politics, not really, or the art of gaining favor, even if he’s never been particularly good at it. He can already feel their fey respond to their King’s favor towards him, but it’s impossible to think of that when Viktor is so close, flowers falling loose from his braided hair as he pirouettes as beautifully as any prima ballerina.

It’s been a long time since Yuri has danced, and he forgets to be careful, letting Viktor pull him close then spin him away, matching him step for step in a crazy, haphazard waltz and laughing into his chest when the mass of dancing bodies push them together, drunk on their fey’s happiness. There may be a price for this later, but Yuri can’t bring himself to care, not when Viktor is warm and near and _content_ , his medal cool against Yuri’s palm.

After, Viktor hands him his cane and kisses him in front of the entire Court, lingering and sweet.

“You did well, Yura,” he murmurs into the space between them, low and private. Viktor’s attention and approval is a dangerous combination; Yuri is dizzy with it.

“No more tests,” he insists, steadier than he feels. His hand finds Viktor’s wrist of its own accord. This—everything—it seems too easy. Unreal. Yuri can’t stop imagining that Viktor will slip through his fingers if he looks away.

Viktor’s eyes are inscrutable, and very blue. “Tomorrow is another day,” he says, and pulls free of Yuri’s grasp.

 

 

 

“What?” Mila asks when she catches Yuri staring, flitting ahead of him on wings instead of legs, leading him home through the faerie ring.

“Nothing,” Yuri says, then, “You look different.”

Mila’s beauty is outshining the setting sun, her cheeks bright with color and hair disheveled from the revelry. She feels _powerful_ in a way Yuri can’t remember her ever being, even when he was afraid of her.

“We are all different today, golden prince,” she tells him with the haunting laugh that used to make him tremble and now makes him smile back. “Our King is happy.”

She pauses. “ _You_ are happy.”

Yuri stumbles and almost falls, but Mila barely notices, distracted by the grass under her bare feet. _Happy_ isn’t the word he would have used, but he laughed, and danced, and had—fun.

He doesn’t really remember the last time he had fun.

Mila stops at the treeline, as she always does. Yuri makes to hobble ahead, but she grabs his cane to stop him. Yuri yanks it away from her.

“Don’t do that,” he says irritably, but Mila doesn’t look sorry.

“Viktor will not promise to forgive you,” she tells him, wings snapping shut like a warning. “We remember betrayals, golden prince, as you will from now on. But he is a summer fey, just like the rest of us, and he needs you.”

The summer fey touched Yuri’s hair and brushed their spindly fingers over his skin when he left, furtive and reverent. He looked at them and thought he might have bent his head for a gilded collar, too, if he knew it would make them so healthy.

Viktor will never be happy enough for his fey on his own, not tied down as he is, alone and distant and tired of his responsibilities. Yuri doesn’t think he could do any better.

“I know,” he says, because at least together, they can achieve this. “I need him, too.”

 

 

 

His grandfather makes vegetable stew for dinner, and Yuri stuffs himself until he’s full and soaks up the rest with his bread. He forgets to save any, but his grandfather doesn’t scold him for it, putting the last bite of his own piece out on the porch. His grandfather has stopped commenting on much of anything at this point; he doesn’t ask about Yuri’s forays into the forest or about his day. When their plates are clean he stands to clear the table, his back cracking audibly.

“Dedulya, I can do that,” Yuri blurts at once, even though his leg won’t hold up at the sink without support. His grandfather quells him with a practiced look.

“I am not so old yet, Yurotchka,” he says. “You can go to your room.”

“I can keep you company here,” Yuri says, still floating on leftover joy from the revelry. He hasn’t had much time to hang out with his grandfather since they stopped going out on the boat together, and Yuri is feeling—good—today. They could watch an old black and white movie together, maybe, or sit in the living room and read.

“Not tonight, Yurotchka,” his grandfather says. “Would you like to come fishing with me tomorrow?”

Yuri wishes he could say yes, but that would be a disaster. He’s only just won back the summer fey, and he knows he can win Viktor this time, too, but he has to be consistent. He can’t skip even a day, not now.

“Next time, maybe?” he hedges, guilt roiling in his stomach as his grandfather’s face falls.

“Alright, Yurotchka,” his grandfather says quietly. “As long as you come home.”

Yuri blinks at him, confused. “Where else would I go?” he asks, but his grandfather shakes his head and turns back to the sink.

“It’s not important,” he says, and Yuri is hit with the sudden, striking awareness that his grandfather is _lying_.

“I’m going to go call Beka,” he says, and scrambles up from the table, grabbing his cane and leaving the empty hot water bottle he was waiting to fill behind. His grandfather has told him an untruth, and Yuri knows. His grandfather might tell him more untruths if he stays, and one might be big enough that Yuri will be forced to exact a price he doesn’t want from the person he loves most in the world.

No summer faerie will ever be worth that.

 

 

 

“ _Yura_ ,” Viktor sing-songs at him, mouth stretched in a grin as he lies on the grass at Yuri’s feet. “Read to me.”

Yuri thinks he almost preferred when Viktor _wasn’t_ making an effort towards this; he was less annoying that way. It hasn’t been ten minutes since he pestered Yuri into taking off his shoes and socks, and even less since he picked out one of Yuri’s comics and started flipping through them. Viktor is as easily bored as he is excitable, and Yuri is only one person.

“Fuck off,” he snaps, digging his bare toes into the crisp grass. The ground shifts beneath his feet, and Yuri will never admit it out loud but he’s starting to understand why the summer fey wear as little as they do.

Viktor tosses his hair out of his face and puts his head back down on his arms. “Yura,” he says again, definitely whining now. “I like when you read to me.”

They’re only just coming to know each other like this, alone without their fey forcing Viktor into a box, but Yuri is already familiar with the variety of pretty smiles Viktor wears to coax his advisors and Yuri into giving him what he wants.

“No,” Yuri says, feeling spiteful. If Viktor doesn’t know yet that Yuri won’t be manipulated, then he’ll learn. “Read it yourself.”

“But I don’t read your language,” Viktor points out reasonably, and Yuri looks heavenward and wishes they had Court business to distract them both.

“I’m learning yours,” he says. “You can figure out mine.”

Viktor is not like the Dark King, holding Court in overcrowded cities, or the Winter King who was once human. Viktor never leaves his forests and trees; he won’t ever have a reason to read any human language, especially now that he has Yuri to do it for him. Yuri turns back to the strange, foreign letters Zhora left him to practice, ignoring Viktor’s surprise. Being denied must be terribly new to the Summer King.

Then Viktor sits up, combing twigs out of his hair with his fingers. “Alright,” he says. “Teach me.”

Yuri gapes at him. “No!” he says, and Viktor’s cheerful expression flickers. Yuri reevaluates. “Why would you care?”

Viktor taps the medal on his chest, almost absent-minded, but Yuri knows better. Viktor has never touched that medal without a purpose. This is how he calls Yuri _husband_ without actually saying the word, drawing attention to their contract without ever bringing it up.

“It’s only fair, isn’t it?” Viktor asks. “For me to meet you where you are.”

Yuri puts down his notebook and gives Viktor his full attention, just like Viktor wanted. “There’s nothing in it for you,” he says, because there are no more debts between them anymore.

“Of course there is,” Viktor says, gifting Yuri with a crooked smile. “You might need me to know it someday.”

Yuri’s not the only one in this relationship who is never _boring_. He snaps his mouth shut and flips pages on his notebook where he painstakingly copied out the fey tongue instead of looking at Viktor’s stupid face. It’s actually aggravating, how difficult it is to care about any of Viktor’s ulterior motives when he goes and says shit like that.

“Fine,” Yuri says, gruff, and clears his throat. “If you can _shut up_ until I finish this bit so Zhora won’t freak out at me, I’ll show you the English alphabet.”

 

 

 

Otabek listens to Yuri rant for half an hour about Court politics and Viktor’s infuriating ability to piss Yuri off as much as JJ, then says, “I’m glad you’re becoming friends.”

Yuri comes to a screeching halt. “We’re not _friends_ ,” he snaps, disgusted, and Otabek rolls his eyes.

“No, you’re _married_ ,” he says, and there’s that uncomfortable undertone to that word again; Otabek trying and failing to understand. “But if you can’t be in love with him, it’s good that you’re at least friends.”

They don’t talk about love, just like they don’t talk about their relationship. Yuri wishes selfishly that Otabek would go back to never bringing it up; at least then Yuri could have his best friend back without these awful, awkward pauses permeating every conversation.

Otabek misunderstands Yuri’s silence. “ _Are_ you in love with him?” he asks, eyes very wide, and Yuri yelps, “ _No!_ ”

“No,” he says again, pushing away the image of Viktor sprawled at his feet, boneless and content and offering Yuri things he never knew he wanted. “Of course not. He’s _annoying_ , and full of himself, and I’m not—no.”

If he was going to be in love with anyone, it would be with Otabek. But Yuri can’t tell Otabek that, not when he doesn’t know for sure.

Otabek doesn’t look convinced. There’s a furrow between his brows that wasn’t there a minute ago, etching itself permanently onto the plane of his forehead. Yuri wishes he hadn’t mentioned Viktor at all. Otabek told him they could have a lot of things to talk about, now that there’s more in their lives than just training, but everything Yuri has in his life feels like a minefield.

“Did you know,” Otabek starts. “That you talk about him the same way you talk about JJ?”

“Ugh,” Yuri says reflexively. “That’s even worse; I can’t stand Leroy.”

“You wouldn’t have gotten as far as you did without JJ,” Otabek says, and holds up a hand when Yuri opens his mouth. “No, Yura, listen to me. JJ is—he pushes you in a way I was never going to. You wouldn’t have been as good a skater as you were without JJ to fight every step of the way, and you wouldn’t have gotten back up after your injury without him.”

He pauses, then adds, “Sometimes I’m jealous.”

Yuri swallows. “You’re my best friend,” he says. It doesn’t come out as strong as he’d like. “You’re better than him.”

“I know that,” Otabek says, and he looks tired all over again. “I know you—care about me more, and I know I’m a good skater. I’ve got the Olympic gold to prove it. But I don’t know if you need me. I don’t know if you ever did.”

“I do,” Yuri blurts. Some innate part of him knows he has to fix this, but he doesn’t know how. “Beka, they’re just _medals_.”

Otabek rears back, visibly surprised. They stare at each other through their respective screens. After a moment, Otabek snorts a laugh.

“Never thought I’d hear that from you,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose to hide his smile. “You and JJ, your eyes were always on the prize.”

“I gave mine away,” Yuri says, heart in his throat. Otabek looks like such an old man when he does that, but Yuri will never tell him. “Beka, trust me, you have nothing to be jealous of.”

Otabek lets out a breath. “You’re not going to understand this, Yura,” he says quietly. “Just like there are things about you that I don’t understand anymore. Things have changed.”

Yuri bites the inside of his cheek before he can protest; Otabek isn’t wrong.

“Always thought Leroy would be the first to go and ruin everything, not me,” Yuri says lightly, flopping back against his pillow. Otabek laughs again, and Yuri wishes he could explain how much Otabek _is_ needed, how his voice makes the loudness in Yuri’s head calm down so he can hear himself think. Leroy only makes it louder, makes Yuri blinder, and Viktor.

Viktor is different.

“He doesn’t remind me of Leroy, you know,” Yuri tells Otabek, and when Otabek blinks he clarifies. “Viktor. He doesn’t remind me of Leroy.”

“No?” Otabek asks, dark eyes boring into Yuri despite the poor resolution. Yuri thinks of Viktor leaning over a children’s book to puzzle out the letters because he wants to be _fair_ to Yuri, and Otabek looking between Yuri and his beloved bike and choosing to call an Uber.

“He reminds me of you,” Yuri says, and Otabek rolls his eyes so hard it’s a miracle they don’t fall out of his head.

“Yura,” he says, exasperated. “How is that any better?”

 

 

 

_It’s not_ , Yuri thinks as Viktor steps seamlessly into the space at Yuri’s side like it was made for him, and falls silent to let Yuri shout their advisors down when they press too hard. Yuri grabs Viktor’s hand to pull him into the revelry when he stands too far apart and Viktor startles, something like wonder lighting up his face and making Yuri prouder than he’s been since he stood at the top of a podium with a gold medal around his neck.

Yuri knows this feeling, that makes him brave enough to clasp his fingers around Viktor’s wrist as they walk and lean into Viktor’s shoulder when it brushes against his, warm and more familiar every day. He’s felt it before, standing on a bridge in Barcelona under the waning sun.

 

 

 

“I have a surprise for you,” Viktor greets him at the edge of the treeline where he almost never appears, choosing instead to wait for Yuri at Court, or deep within the forest where no one can see the brightness of his wings through the foliage. Yuri pauses with his cane digging into the dirt and squints up at his stupid heart-shaped smile. Viktor’s last surprise involved a long lecture about the intricacies of the relationship between the High Court and Summer Court from Zhora.

“What kind of surprise,” Yuri demands, suspicious. Viktor’s wings shiver at his back, sending a shower of dust to the grass. His smile could melt the Winter King’s frost.

“No Court today,” he says, bouncing on the balls of his feet like an overexcited puppy. “Spring is due in the North. That’s where I’m going.”

Yuri’s senses snap to high alert. It’s no secret that when Viktor goes away to tend to his trees or whatever the fuck else he does when he’s not here, he goes alone. Yuri comes to the forest to find Mila waiting for him instead of Viktor, and Viktor has never left a warning before.

Yuri watches Viktor watching him, blue eyes like cut glass, and knows this is a _test_. For all that they decided, no more debts, Viktor doesn’t believe him, not really.

“I’ll make you a promise,” Yuri blurts, impulsive and stupid and _done_ paying for the Winter King’s mistakes. He raises his free fingers to the medal at Viktor’s chest, then the hollow at Viktor’s throat. _Husband_ , the way Viktor says it, the way Otabek hates to hear.

“I won’t leave you,” Yuri says, the words heavy in his mouth. He doesn’t need to be fey to understand the power of an uncensored promise, and Viktor, who was born to the weight of words and tongue, trembles in his grasp like a newly-caught summer sprite.

“Yura,” he breathes, and Yuri tightens his hand around the medal and pulls him close, until he can smell the flowers woven into Viktor’s hair.

“I will stay with you,” he says again, acutely aware that in this, he is the first. No one has ever offered Viktor a gift like this. No one has ever forgone demanding a price. “So _ask_ me, Viktor.”

Viktor’s eyes are too bright, but he carefully untangles Yuri’s hand from the ribbon, frayed after months of wear. Yuri has the distracting thought that he should replace it with a new one, and then he’s distracted by Viktor’s lips on his, warm and wet.

This is not a goodbye.

“Come with me,” Viktor murmurs into his mouth. He tastes like summer rain. “I don’t want to go alone.”

Yuri wants to know where they’re going, and when they’ll be back. He wants to ask if this means they’re done with the tests, if Viktor believes that Yuri is not the Winter King.

“Yes,” he says instead, gripping his cane so hard he feels the bones shift in his palm. “Yes.”

 

 

 

Viktor flits ahead, faster than Yuri can follow with his cane slipping in the snow melting at his feet, then comes back, impatient like a child. His joy is infectious and entirely foreign; it makes green grass bloom beneath his toes and chases away the winter chill. When Yuri shivers in his ratty shirt Viktor throws his arms around him and pours summer magic into him, warming him up better than any fire.

“You’re so _slow_ , Yura,” he calls, and dodges when Yuri throws a rock at him. He’s not quite as beautiful like this, eyes crinkling from his smiles and face blotchy with exertion, but it’s the most honest he’s ever been.

This is how he was meant to be, Yuri thinks. Imperfect and breathtaking. Joy, and freedom, and _Summer_.

“Come meet Makkachin,” Viktor says, and leads him to a giant reindeer Yuri can barely muster the courage to pet. “Look at the trees,” he says, and puts Yuri’s hand to the trunk of a tall, ageing oak to show him how to feed magic into it, so it remains healthy.

Viktor is very fey here, in this space between Winter and Summer. Yuri had almost forgotten the dangerous creature who came to him months ago, and bowed his head for Yuri’s gift. If Yuri were still the person he used to be, he thinks he would be afraid.

“Dance with me,” Viktor demands, and, “Let me show you the flowers.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Yuri gripes, but his cheeks hurt from smiling. “I have a bum leg!”

Viktor wraps his arms around him and spins them both, laughing when Yuri squawks in indignation. “You can still dance,” he insists. “You don’t need summer wine.”

“You’re spoiled,” Yuri snaps, but there’s no heat in his words, and he hasn’t quite figured out a way to tell Viktor no. It probably doesn’t help that he doesn’t want to.

 

 

 

These are the things Yuri didn’t expect.

When Yuri’s leg grows too heavy, Viktor leaves him sitting on the ground and flits away on his own. He comes back with his arms full of spring flowers that he scatters in Yuri’s hair, then flops down on the grass and puts his head in Yuri’s lap. The fey are impatient and unaccommodating, but Viktor blinks up at Yuri with big, blue eyes and says, “Can we stay here a while?” like he’s the one with a throbbing, useless leg that even summer magic can’t hold up forever.

The crisp winter air grows warm around them. Yuri tries not to notice, but there are flowers blooming at his feet, just like at Viktor’s.

“Yeah,” he says, voice thicker than he’d like.

“But just for a few minutes,” he adds, and Viktor snorts but lets him pretend, because he understands pride better than anyone Yuri knows. He rolls over and closes his eyes, curling into Yuri’s knees like he belongs there.

Yuri watches him drift into sleep, his hair muddy from the melting snow and spread over Yuri’s lap, and wonders if it might not be so bad after all, to spend a lifetime married to this Summer King.

 

 

 

“Oh,” someone says softly, and Yuri snaps his head up from his book to find the Winter King blinking at them from a few feet away, dressed once again in his frost-hemmed coat with his staff clutched awkwardly in one hand. His eyes drop to Yuri’s lap, and Yuri unthinkingly lowers the book to hide Viktor’s face, naked and open in his sleep. This is not a privilege Viktor has granted the Winter King, not this time.

If the Winter King is offended by Yuri’s protectiveness, he doesn’t show it. “He usually comes alone,” he says, gesturing at Viktor. “I didn’t think you would be here.”

The Winter King is a _liar_. “Clearly, he didn’t think you would either,” Yuri snipes, and shakes Viktor’s shoulder where the frostbite faded overnight, healed by the Dark King while Yuri slept safe in his grandfather’s home. Yuri can’t take on a monarch on his own, and he doesn’t trust himself to not piss off the Winter King.

“Viktor, wake up,” he says, and Viktor’s eyes flutter open. He squints at the too-bright sky and tucks his cheek against Yuri’s stomach, and Yuri feels the moment he registers the Winter King’s magic pressing up against his own, strange and unnaturally cold in the spring air.

“Hello,” Viktor greets the Winter King, slow and sleep-soft. He sits up and stretches, movements languid and beautiful. If Yuri weren’t trained to make beauty with his body, he might have thought Viktor didn’t know what he looked like, elongating the line of his neck and tilting his head just so, letting his hair spill over his shoulders.

Something in the Winter King’s face relaxes. “Viktor,” he says, admonishing, and Viktor’s posture crumbles with a laugh. Yuri watches him tilt towards the Winter King the same way he leaned into Yuri earlier, and wants to hate the Winter King a little, for taking Viktor away from him before he was ready.

The Winter King looks between Viktor and Yuri. “You’re earlier than I expected,” he says.

“Summer is stronger this year,” Viktor replies, brushing crusted mud out of his hair. He climbs to his feet and in a single, seamless motion, steps between Yuri and the Winter King. Yuri wants to be affronted, but he remembers the Winter King’s touch leaving black around Viktor’s shoulders, and the vicious, cold anger the Winter King left him with in Toronto. Viktor is safe. The Winter King is not.

“Viktor,” the Winter King says, a thread of hurt in his voice. “I wouldn’t hurt him.”

“You’ve been very kind, as always,” Viktor says, which is not an agreement. Yuri braces his cane against the root of the tree and stands, fighting the urge to hide behind Viktor’s wings, spread behind him like a shield.

The Winter King bristles, almost imperceptive. Viktor’s bland politeness is _annoying_ ; Yuri can imagine how much it stings to be subjected to that when the last time they saw each other, Viktor gifted the Winter King with the kind of smile that Yuri could barely stand to look at.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” the Winter King tells Yuri, probably aiming for friendly but falling short. Yuri doesn’t believe him for a second. The fey are territorial creatures, monarchs even more so, and Yuri has taken what had been the Winter King’s for a long time.

“Did you burn,” he finds himself asking. “When Viktor touched you?”

“Little thief,” Viktor says, quiet. He hasn’t called Yuri that in weeks. Yuri is the summer prince in front of their fey, and _Yura_ when they’re alone, and the rage that froths over in Yuri’s stomach is startling in its newness.

Yuri is not a monarch, but Viktor no longer belongs to the Winter King.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” Yuri says viciously, smiling the perfect smile he learned to hold at the podium, whether he was standing at the top or the bottom. “I’m still new at this; I’m sure you remember how it was.”

Viktor’s surprise is obvious, but the Winter King looks at Yuri speculatively. Yuri is as familiar with that look as he is with the ice; he’s seen it from competitors since he started winning gold, and it didn’t stop until he crashed and burned and disappeared from the human world.

“I do remember how it was,” the Winter King says. “Before I learned all the rules.”

Viktor shifts to the side, casually exposing Yuri like he’s decided Yuri doesn’t need his protection anymore. It’s a better reprimand than one spoken out loud, and Yuri shuts his mouth. He can yell at Viktor later, when they’re not in front of the Winter King.

“I should have let you know I’d be early,” Viktor tells the Winter King, smiling apologetically. “I imagined you’d be busy in the South.”

“I was,” the Winter King says. “But then you came here. It’s spring, Viktor.”

Viktor brightens like a clear summer dawn. “I know!” he bursts, like he’s finally sharing a wonderful secret. He looks at Yuri, wings shivering with excitement. “And look, I’m not alone today!”

Viktor isn’t looking at the Winter King, but Yuri is. He sees the moment the Winter King’s lovely face crumples, Viktor’s eager honesty doing more damage than Yuri’s barbed remarks.

This is what the Winter King meant, when he said Viktor has never been human. He was born to make his fey happy. He’s incapable of understanding that his joy might not spread to every person within his reach.

Yuri turns his eyes away and towards Viktor, clasping Viktor’s wrist to keep his attention. The Winter King told him to come back; in return, Yuri will give him this privacy.

“Are we done here?” he asks. Viktor blinks at him, confused.

“We could be,” he says. “Is it time for you to go home already?”

Yuri doesn’t dare glance at the Winter King. Last time they were together, Yuri felt invisible in the backdrop of the force that was Viktor’s relationship with the Winter King. He wonders if the Winter King feels like that now.

“Sure,” he says, because he’s not cruel enough to say no.

When they turn back to the Winter King, his kind brown eyes are hard, and on Yuri. Viktor opens his mouth, but the Winter King cuts him off.

“I didn’t need to warn you after all,” he says, voice carefully neutral. He’s breathing too fast. “You’re better at this than I was, golden prince.”

Viktor steps towards him, brows drawn down. Spring is suddenly less radiant around them, the slush freezing at their feet. “Can you find your own way home?” he asks Yuri, tilting his head towards the faerie circle they stepped out of, hours and hours ago.

Yuri doesn’t want to leave alone, not when he laid claim to Viktor not five minutes ago, but he can’t lie. “Yes,” he says.

“No,” the Winter King says. This panicked anger is different from the cold fury he showed Yuri in Toronto; Yuri has the unpleasant thought that this is another thing he wasn’t meant to see. “Leave, both of you.”

Yuri’s cheeks grow hot with anger. “This is _spring_ ,” he snaps before he can stop himself. Viktor puts a warning hand on his shoulder, but Yuri shakes him off. This is not the Winter King’s domain, not anymore. “You’re the one who’s trespassing.”

“Fine,” the Winter King says, and he’s never been more human than he is then, petulant and sullen. “I can go.”

“Wait,” Viktor calls, and Yuri has to shove down the urge to grab at his wrist.

“It’s spring,” Viktor says, and something in Yuri sits up and pays attention. “I thought you were in the South.”

The Winter King presses his lips together, chest caved inwards as though he can possibly be cold. “I should have stayed in the South,” he says. “You don’t need me here.”

“That’s not what I _meant_ ,” Viktor bursts, then stops and takes a deep breath, visibly calming down. “I don’t want that.”

“You’re _married_ , Viktor,” the Winter King throws out his arms. It’s getting colder by the second; Yuri rubs his arms and doesn’t press closer to Viktor’s warmth. “What does it _matter_ now, what either of us wants? Summer and Winter have decided!”

Viktor takes a step, then another, leaving Yuri behind. He touches the Winter King’s face, and neither of them flinch like they should. Viktor’s attention is like the sun; the Winter King turns towards him like there’s nothing else in the world.

“We have spring,” Viktor says. “And autumn. You’re going to give that up?”

_He is_ , Yuri thinks, watching the Winter King falter and shake his head, the fight draining out of him as fast as it came. Whatever this means, whatever they had, the Winter King will run from it. Yuri of all people knows what it looks like, when someone is afraid of change.

“I have to return to my Court,” the Winter King says, instead of _yes_. None of them can lie.

Viktor’s hand falls away. He’ll let the Winter King go, just like he let Yuri go. It isn’t in him, to ask people to stay.

Yuri thinks that might be why he’s been alone for so long.

“Viktor,” he says. This is for Viktor and the Winter King to settle on their own; he’s seen more than enough. “Let’s go.”

Viktor holds himself stiff and wounded, blue eyes like cut glass. “I’ll find you in the South,” he says to Winter King, and the Winter King puts a hand over his face. For a second, Yuri is afraid he’ll cry.

But the Winter King is no longer human, and whatever his contract with Viktor, this is not something he’ll deign to show Yuri. When he takes his hand away, his eyes are dry.

“Take your husband home, Viktor,” he says, and when he leaves his boots crackle on the frozen ground.

 

 

 

“That was childish,” Viktor snaps the moment they’re back in their green summer forest, his hair colored with the setting sun. For the first time he strides ahead on long, able legs, letting Yuri fall behind. “Both of you.”

They’re far from the days when Yuri would have run from Viktor’s anger. “Your judgment is compromised when it comes to him,” Yuri snaps back. “He was _trespassing_ , Viktor.”

Viktor whirls around. “He’s a _monarch_ ,” he snarls. “And he’s never done you any harm. He’s been kind, and helpful, and you’ve offended and disrespected him. I’m not compromised; you’re one wrong step away from starting a _war_.”

Yuri slams his cane into the ground, so furious he can feel the grass wilting at his feet. “You _love_ him, you asshole!” he shouts at Viktor, the words ripping from his chest more painfully than he thought possible. “You’re never going to go to war against him! He was in my home! He followed me into the Dark King’s city, and you just let him! You let him do what he wants, and you don’t notice when _he_ disrespects _us_ by being where he shouldn’t!”

Something flickers in Viktor’s eyes, and Yuri draws short.

“He wasn’t where he shouldn’t be,” he realizes slowly. “He was there to see you.”

Viktor goes away sometimes, to meet the Winter King. Last time Yuri went looking for Viktor, he found himself knee-deep in snow.

Yuri limps closer, and Viktor lets him pick up his hand. His palm is unblemished, not black and rotting like it should be. The Winter King’s cheek was pale and unburnt, when Viktor let him go.

“Spring,” Yuri breathes. “You can touch each other in _spring_.”

“And autumn,” Viktor says. His hand in Yuri’s is very still, like him. “Twice a year, when we can enter each other’s territory.”

Yuri swallows, hard. “I was the one trespassing,” he says.

“No,” Viktor tells him, and pulls away. “I took you there. I wanted to.”

“And now?” Yuri asks, because he doesn’t know what he’d have done, if he was in love with Otabek the night he nearly dissolved his marriage. “I swore to stay with you; you never made me a promise.”

Viktor’s expression twists into a scowl. A part of Yuri will never stop being satisfied at being able to put such ugly emotions on that beautiful face. This is a privilege no one else will ever have.

But then Viktor catches himself, and his brows smooth out. “You don’t have to worry, Yura,” he says, his feigned cheer grating on Yuri’s nerves. “I will always come back to you. I’m wearing your gift, and I’ve never taken it off.”

Yuri looks up at Viktor’s pretty, pretty smile, and asks, “Do you really expect me to believe a word that comes out of your mouth when you’re like this?”

Viktor keeps smiling, but it’s sharper now, his anger carefully tamped down where Yuri can’t see it. “I don’t lie,” he says, even as the air grows warmer around them. “You of all people should know better now.”

“You don’t tell the truth either,” Yuri scoffs, unafraid. “You don’t even know what you want.”

“And what do you want, Yura,” Viktor wants to know, casually cruel like he hasn’t been in weeks. “You never told me what you’ll do, if your humans ask you to stay.”

Yuri sees red. He drops his cane and lunges forward on wobbly legs, grabbing the front of Viktor’s shift and shoving him so hard he hears the fabric rip in his hands. Viktor staggers back and Yuri overbalances, but the pain of crashing awkwardly to the ground is worth it for the naked shock in Viktor’s wide blue eyes. Yuri wonders how long it’s been since someone dared to touch him violently, the all-powerful Summer King who does what he wants and has never owed anyone a thing.

“You’re a coward,” Yuri spits at him, fisting his hands in the browning grass. Viktor’s wings rustle noisily at his back. “You won’t take off the medal, and you won’t give up your Court. Summer suffered for your unhappiness for _years_ , and now you’re too afraid to be happy.”

Viktor’s hair is disheveled and the torn slip of cloth hangs off his shoulder, but he stands tall and proud as ever, even though his cheeks are ruddy red and he’s breathing harder than Yuri’s ever seen.

“You’re no better than me, little thief,” Viktor spits, disdain dripping off him like rain. “You don’t know what you want any better than I do.”

_What does it matter_ , the Winter King asked, and Yuri feels the truth of it sink into him now. _Want_ is irrelevant in this world, and he hates Viktor for reminding him.

“Fuck you,” Yuri says, and picks up his cane. All the green around them has turned brown, the flowers dead and the sun searing overhead.

“Go where you want to go, I don’t fucking care,” he says, pushing to his feet. He limps towards the path he carved over months of stumbling down this forest looking for his fey, his leg a blazing line of pain from the fall. The earth beneath his feet shifts to make his way easier, and Yuri hates that, too.

“I don’t know what you _want!_ ” Viktor bursts behind him, and Yuri freezes with his cane in the air. “I don’t know why you’re _here!_ Your debts are paid, you’re free to leave, and instead you made me a _promise_.”

His eyes are too bright, when Yuri turns around. The few feet of distance between them feels too much. It’s impossible to stay angry when Viktor looks like that, desperate and terrified, like Yuri could hurt him if he tried.

“I don’t understand,” Viktor says, quieter. “You have friends, and family. You have things you love that you can _have_. It’s lonely, being king or prince. It’s—suffocating, to only have to be _happy_. Why would you ever want this?”

_I don’t_ , Yuri doesn’t say. When he first returned, the answer was debt, and obligation. Then Mila took his hand and Zhora taught him their words, and Viktor spun into his arms and looked at him like he was someone he could _trust_.

“I like it here,” Yuri says instead, and meets Viktor’s eyes. “I have friends here.”

“Friends,” Viktor repeats, wondering. “Is that what we are?”

His arms are wrapped around his ribs, his wings trembling at his back. He’s never felt more temporary than he does now; Yuri thinks if he reaches for him Viktor might slip through his fingers like summer wine.

“I don’t know,” Yuri tells him. “I never had many friends.”

Viktor gifts him with a smile, tentative and small. It changes his whole face.

“Me neither,” he says.

Yuri has spent his life chasing the impossible, and succeeding. His family has been supportive, and his friends—friend—has been accommodating and kind. He’s never had to be unselfish. He looks at Viktor now, all the power of Summer at his feet and still skittish like a frightened cat, and thinks for the first time that he might want to be.

“You should go to the South,” he says, surprising himself. “You should—go see the Winter King.”

The change in Viktor is immediate, and Yuri knows he’s caused an offense he didn’t mean. “Do you think it’s that simple to be rid of me?” Viktor scoffs. “I am not yours to give away, little thief.”

Yuri laughs. Viktor flinches from the sound like Yuri used to shy from him a lifetime ago, and it makes Yuri laugh again, thoughtless and unkind.

“You _are_ mine,” Yuri tells him, and when he limps closer Viktor holds still, frozen where he stands. “I stole you from this forest, and put my glory around your neck. Everything I knew, I gave up for you, and asked for nothing in return but your _faith_.”

He wraps his hand around Viktor’s wrist, tighter and tighter until he feels the bones grind together beneath his palm. He hopes it hurts. He hopes it leaves the kind of bruises Viktor will see and _remember_.

“I’ll make you another promise, Viktor,” he says, recklessness settling in his bones like a long-forgotten truth. “I will chain you to the ground and rip your wings from your back, before I ever let you go.”

Viktor’s lips part soundlessly, but Yuri waits for him, patient like he didn’t know he could be. It takes a long few minutes, but eventually Viktor drops his shoulders, then his head. His hair falls over his face like a curtain, but Yuri doesn’t push it away.

“You’re so strange,” Viktor murmurs, and huffs a quiet laugh. “It’s what I thought the first time I saw you.”

“I remember,” Yuri says. He remembers everything about that evening in the forest, Viktor’s wings colored by the setting sun, the way his laugh made the hair stand up on Yuri’s arms.

Viktor shakes his head again, and takes a deep breath. It’s quick and practiced, the way he tucks himself back into his little shell, piece by piece in front of Yuri’s eyes. For once, Yuri doesn’t mind. The Viktor he’s seen today will always be there, hidden behind the Summer King’s pride.

“Alright, golden prince,” Viktor says, straightening his back. “I’ll go, if that’s what you still want.”

“I do,” Yuri says, but he doesn’t let go of Viktor’s wrist. Viktor’s skin around his grip is white. “Just—come back.”

Viktor regards him with soft blue eyes. “I’ve always come back to you, Yura.”

It’s not a promise, not the way Yuri has made him promises, but it will have to be enough. Yuri pries his fingers away, one by one, and pretends not to see the dark imprints he leaves behind.

“Goodnight, Viktor,” he says. “Tomorrow is another day.”

This time when he turns around, Viktor doesn’t stop him.

 

 

 

Yuri goes home. He makes dinner, eats with his grandfather, feeds Potya, and limps to his room. He picks up his phone, and there are three messages from Otabek blinking on the screen.

_You don’t know what you want any better than I do_ , Viktor told him, honest as only a faerie can be. Yuri looks at the last message on his phone, a simple, _did you have a good day?_ and thinks Viktor wasn’t wrong.

_yes_ , he types, then deletes it. He types, _i missed you_ , then deletes that, too, because there are only so many lies he can tell himself before they weigh as heavily on his tongue as the ones spoken out loud.

This is a truth: Yuri has never once missed Otabek in the forest. Not before he came back, and certainly not since. He misses Viktor now, sitting in his human home in his human bed, but it’s Otabek who slipped out of his life without him even noticing.

This is another truth: Yuri misses his husband, but who he wants to miss is his best friend.

Yuri thinks of Viktor, lonely and drifting until Summer assigned him a collar and a marriage to force him into happiness he couldn’t achieve on his own. He thinks of the Winter King, as afraid of change and of losing Viktor as Yuri used to be, who ran once before and is running once again.

Yuri thinks, he will not be like them.

 

 

 

“It’s after dark, golden prince,” Mila says when she finally appears, wings spread behind her as unselfconsciously as they would be in the forest. Yuri blinks up at her from where he’s slid down the closed back door of the house, bad leg extended in front of him.

“Is it always you who comes to patrol?” he asks, curious.

“Not always,” Mila says. “But we heard you were waiting, and I didn’t imagine you were waiting for the King. Not after you sent him away.”

If she disapproves of what they’re doing, there’s nothing of it on her face. Yuri pats the ground next to him and Mila sinks down effortlessly, reaching for the piece of bread Yuri’s grandfather put out earlier. His grandfather is asleep now, which is why Yuri is here at all.

Yuri waits for her to eat the bread and drink the milk, then says, “Tell me about spring.”

Mila smiles, sharp as a knife. “I won’t tell you how to leave,” she says. “If that’s what you’re looking for.”

Yuri wants to be annoyed, but she wasn’t there when he promised Viktor he would stay, and Viktor wouldn’t tell her of his own volition. Their fey are Yuri’s to win over, and unlike the others that Viktor could charm, Mila was Yuri’s friend first.

“I don’t want to leave,” Yuri says, blunt. “You all knew who I was waiting for, the first time I went into the forest. Viktor didn’t come for me in spring. He waited until summer. Why?”

Mila looks like she’s thinking of not answering, and suddenly Yuri understands why Viktor doesn’t dance with his fey. Why no one else touches him, even though he’s as tactile as any of them.

Yuri is the summer prince. Mila should have known better than to give him her name.

“Mila,” Yuri says, deliberate. “Tell me where he was.”

Mila’s jaw clenches, ruining the lovely lines of her face. Yuri still owes her; it’s impossible that she won’t remember this moment when she finally comes to collect.

“You know already,” she says, barbed and aiming to hurt. “He was with the Winter King.”

Yuri did know, but he didn’t come out here to ask questions of a faerie without preparing for it. “Tell me how,” he says. “What about Court?”

“We hold Court where there is Summer, and our King comes to us,” Mila tells him, laughing at his confusion. “You didn’t really think this little forest housed the Summer Court always, did you?”

“I didn’t—” Yuri starts, but Mila cuts him off.

“No, summer prince,” she shakes her head. “We’re here because you are. If you choose to stay here when Summer is due in the South, we’ll come back for you here, every day if we must.”

It’s a kind way of telling him he’s an _inconvenience_. Yuri should have known, probably, but he never really stopped to think of what happened to the summer fey when Winter arrived to chase them away.

“What happens,” Yuri wants to know. “If Viktor and I are apart in the spring?”

Mila straightens immediately, blue eyes bright in the dark. “You do want to go away!” she accuses, betrayal curdling her voice. “You want to abandon us again!”

Yuri doesn’t know what he wants any better than he did that evening, but _want_ means something different in this world. All he knows is that he didn’t become an Olympic champion by sitting on his ass letting his coaches make his choices for him, and he won’t let any seasonal god guide him now. Summer bound him to Viktor and gave him security, but Summer couldn’t make Viktor love him, and it wasn’t Summer that made Yuri forget his old life when Viktor took him in his arms.

“Mila,” Yuri says, because he’s done stumbling around blind. Mila’s wings rustle noisily at her back and her mouth turns down, but she complies before he has to ask again.

“It depends,” she says, reluctant. “These are questions you should ask Viktor, golden prince.”

She’s wrong. Viktor is unpredictable sometimes and manipulative always, and Yuri doesn’t have the authority over him that he does over Mila. He doesn’t know Viktor’s name.

“I might,” Yuri says anyway, because Viktor is her King, and Yuri won’t damage her faith in him. For all his faults, Viktor has never shied from looking after their fey. It’s Yuri’s who’s been remiss in that.

Mila lays a long-fingered hand over his wrist. Yuri almost expects her to close her fist, but she doesn’t.

“There’s too much human in you still,” she says. “Summer is whimsy, and spontaneity. You shouldn’t try so hard to plan your way out of happiness.”

Yuri rolls his eyes. “Summer tried to decide Viktor’s happiness for him,” he points out. “And look how that turned out.”

“But you do make him happy,” Mila says, like she’s already forgotten the disaster that was Yuri running off to the Dark King’s city to get away from the summer fey and their King.

Yuri doesn’t remind her. “I know,” he says instead, because he’d be lying if he said he was doing this for Viktor, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t. Yuri can live a hundred lifetimes and never forget the way Viktor looked in the melting snow, standing across from the Winter King but his smile only for Yuri.

Yuri fought for that, and the trust of their Court. He’s not willing to let it go.

Potya seems to have wandered to the back door; Yuri hears him scratching at the wood like there isn’t a strange faerie right outside. His yowling is going to wake up Yuri’s grandfather.

Mila looks from the door to Yuri. She’s isn’t kind by nature, but she’s always been accepting of his priorities.

“I won’t tell Viktor what you asked, if you don’t want me to,” she says, easy as if she isn’t offering to keep secrets from her King. Mila suits Summer better than either Yuri or Viktor; Yuri wonders why Summer didn’t choose her to be its Queen instead. She would have made their Court so much stronger than Yuri ever can.

Yuri is tempted, and once upon a time he might have said yes just because she offered. His loyalties are different now.

“It’s fine,” he says, leaning heavily on his cane to stand. Potya must sense him moving; he wails louder. “Tell him what you want.”

Mila opens her mouth, but suddenly her attention swings to the house behind him. Yuri hears the lock click half a second before Mila grabs his arm and pulls him towards her, ignoring how he stumbles and goes crashing onto his hands and knees, his leg screaming under him. He barely has time to bite down on a curse before the door swings open.

“Yurotchka, it’s dark out, what are you—” his grandfather’s voice starts, then cuts off.

Yuri stops breathing.

His grandfather is standing in front of them, Potya hissing by his ankles, eyes darting from Yuri sprawled on the ground at Mila’s feet, to Mila herself, not a shred of humanity on her face as she steps between Yuri and his grandfather with her teeth bared and her wings spread to sharp points like a shield. She won’t hesitate to hurt his grandfather, harmless and bent with age as he is, if she thinks him a threat.

Yuri tries to get up, but his knee crumples under him, bolts of fire shooting up his thigh. His grandfather reflexively jerks forward to help, and Yuri grabs Mila’s leg and digs his nails into her soft, unblemished skin.

“ _No_ ,” he hisses at her, then turns to his grandfather, standing in the doorway just on the safe side of the threshold. He looks between Yuri and Mila with something in his wide eyes that looks a lot like fear.

Yuri doesn’t want to know which of them he’s afraid of.

“Dedulya,” he says, and his voice cracks. He clears his throat and tries again. “Dedulya, it’s alright. Go back inside; I’ll be there in a minute.”

His grandfather raises his chin and looks straight at Mila. “You’ve eaten my bread, faerie,” he tells her. “I have no quarrel with you.”

_Lie_ , Yuri knows instantly, and when Mila tilts her head back and laughs, Yuri’s hair stands on end like it hasn’t in months. His grandfather has lied to another faerie.

“ _Stop_ ,” he grips Mila’s leg tighter, heart in his throat. He needs to fix this. “Don’t do anything.”

“He _lies_ , golden prince,” Mila says, and his grandfather’s head swings towards him, jaw slack. Yuri takes a deep breath and swallows his pride.

“Help me up,” he says, reaching for Mila because she can’t refuse. He bites his tongue against the bitterness flooding his stomach when she has to put her small hands under his armpits and haul him upright, and again when he lets himself lean against her side.

“He isn’t yours—” his grandfather starts, furious, and Yuri quiets him with a look he learned in Court, that made their advisors fall silent and Viktor turn his head away to hide his smile.

“Dedulya,” he says, deliberate like he’s speaking a true name. “She won’t hurt me.”

Mila’s arm is wrapped around Yuri’s waist. She’s trapped for as long as Yuri keeps his weight off his bad leg; she can’t move without letting him fall. His grandfather isn’t blind, but he’s a Plisetsky through and through, and every second that passes might make him want to step over the threshold to a place where Mila can _reach_ him.

Yuri prays he won’t have to use Mila’s name in front of his grandfather. There won’t be any coming back from that.

“I promise,” he says, startling himself and Mila both. Her arm tightens around him, but Yuri ignores it. “I promise, Dedulya. If you go inside, I’ll follow you soon. I’ll be fine. Please, go inside. It’s dark out.”

The fey are stronger in the dark. Yuri’s never had the chance to feel it before, but it’s impossible to ignore now, with adrenaline surging through his veins and his grandfather in harm’s way. He could be stronger than Mila if it came down to it, but he hopes it won’t.

That shouldn’t have made his grandfather pause, but it does. He _knows_ , Yuri realizes, his stomach sinking. Maybe not everything, but enough to be aware that Yuri can’t break a promise.

“You’ll come inside in five minutes,” his grandfather says, as firm as he was when Yuri was seven and playing too close to the forest.

Then he turns to Mila. “You’ve eaten my food, faerie,” he says again. “You are not welcome in my home.”

He pushes Potya back with his foot and closes the door. Yuri listens for retreating feet, but doesn’t hear anything. His grandfather is _listening_. He doesn’t know what to do.

Mila starts to edge backwards, taking Yuri with her, but Yuri twists out from under her arm. “You can’t go in there,” Mila says sharply when he nearly teeters over trying to pick his cane up off the ground. She reaches for him again, huffing when Yuri swats her hands away. “I can’t follow you in there.”

“You don’t have to,” Yuri says, straightening painfully. His cane takes most of his weight, but he can’t stop to think about his leg now. “I’ll be safe there.”

“He’s _human_ ,” Mila says, an edge of desperation in her voice that’s entirely new. “He knows your _name_.”

“He’s my _family_ ,” Yuri snaps at her, heart pounding because she’s _right_. His grandfather would never hurt him, Yuri knows that, but all his grandfather knows is how to keep them safe. Yuri can’t tell him the rules of the fey even if he asks, and Yuri knows from experience how easy it is to make a mistake.

Mila presses her lips into a thin line. “He lied to me,” she reminds him. “What of that, golden prince? Do you expect to _order_ me into not collecting?”

Yuri flinches, but he holds his ground. “Add it to my debt,” he says. “I owe you enough.”

Mila makes an aborted motion when Yuri limps towards the house, but she doesn’t actually grab him. Yuri is glad for it; his grandfather shouldn’t find out her name.

“At least come to the forest with me until morning,” she tries. “The King will be back then, he’ll be able to follow you. He can keep you safe.”

“ _Don’t_ tell him,” Yuri whirls around, and whatever’s on his face makes Mila take a step back, eyes wide. Yuri clutches his cane harder to stop his hand from shaking. Viktor can come into a home uninvited, and he won’t take kindly to Yuri’s grandfather’s protection or to his rudeness, no matter the reason for it. Viktor has never eaten his grandfather’s food, and Yuri doesn’t know his name.

He can’t trust Viktor with his grandfather; Viktor is the _Summer King_.

“You said,” Yuri swallows. “You said you wouldn’t tell Vi—wouldn’t tell him, if I didn’t want you to.”

Mila draws herself up to her full height, bristling. “This is not what I meant. You shouldn’t take advantage of my offer this way, golden prince. You owe me more than you can pay already.”

“You said you wouldn’t,” Yuri insists, desperate. If he loses a friend tonight for this, at least his grandfather will be safe. “I don’t want you to. Don’t tell him.”

“And what happens if you need us?” Mila demands. “At least let me stay here; I can go get the King if you call for me.”

Yuri hates that he does, but he thinks about it. He thinks about being able to call for Viktor if he needs him, and being secure in the knowledge that he’ll come.

Except Yuri doesn’t know if Viktor would come. Yuri sent him away, and Viktor could stay away as long as he likes, and choose to return only when he feels like it. Yuri can’t put more faith in Viktor than in his grandfather. He won’t.

“Go away,” he says, and when Mila opens her mouth again Yuri holds up his free hand.

“Don’t make me say your name again,” he says, gentle as he can be with fear souring his tongue. “Go away, and don’t tell him a thing. I’m trusting you.”

_Viktor would be proud_ , Yuri thinks bitterly as Mila goes still. Without the sun lighting her wings, she could almost be a dark fey.

She reaches out to touch his cheek. “Maybe I was wrong,” she muses, smile full of needle-sharp teeth. “Maybe there’s not as much human left in you as I thought.”

His grandfather is listening, and a faerie is giving him her blessing. Yuri swallows down bile as she flits away on light feet and shadowed wings, leaving him alone like he asked. He looks at the closed door of the house. If he tried really hard, he could probably hear his grandfather breathing on the other side. He’s tempted to run. He doesn’t want to know what his grandfather will do.

Yuri puts his cane forward, and limps to the door.

 

 

 

Potya doesn’t care anymore that Yuri is fey, or that he’s been so close to them their scent lingers on his skin. He circles Yuri’s feet and trips up his cane, yowling up at him because he doesn’t seem to quite understand that Yuri can’t lean down to pet him anymore when he’s standing. Yuri almost tries anyway, because that would be easier than looking at his grandfather, who stepped away from him the moment Yuri set foot back in the house.

“You must have known something,” he says when the silence drags on for too long. He balances on his good leg and swings his cane; Potya jumps after it. “I went into the forest every day.”

“Yakov told me you were safe,” his grandfather says. Yuri finally musters the courage to look up, but his grandfather’s gaze is distant, fixed on a point beyond Yuri’s shoulder. He shuffles to the kitchen chairs and sits heavily.

“I was safe,” Yuri says. “They don’t hurt me.”

Not anymore, at least. His grandfather doesn’t need to know about the first few weeks, when he came home with purple and red up and down his arms from the faeries who wanted to steal his eyes.

His grandfather meets his eyes then, the lines of his face hard. “You don’t know that they won’t,” he says. “They don’t understand our ways, and we don’t know theirs. One offence could mean a debt you can’t repay. I’ve _taught_ you this, Yurotchka.”

“It’s a little late for that,” Yuri says, dry. He leans against the wall so he doesn’t have to move further into his grandfather’s space, and wishes for Viktor’s magic. “I caught one.”

Yuri would give up _everything_ , Viktor, Mila, his _leg_ , to never have to see his grandfather look at him like that again. He pulls his cane away from Potya and straightens, desperate to wipe that fear off his grandfather’s face.

“I don’t have to bring them inside,” he says, fast. “It’s not like the stories, dedulya. There won’t be a faerie bride cursing our home. He _wants_ me to stay with him, I think, and I don’t—he’s not going to hold me to my debts. I’m learning their ways, and I would never put you in danger. I don’t even have to go away, just meet them in the forest every day. That’s all. That’s all I promised. Dedulya, don’t be afraid.”

_Don’t be afraid_. He can say it all he wants, but it doesn’t stop his grandfather from rising to his feet, hands braced on the wooden table. It doesn’t stop his grandfather from lowering his head, and saying, “You’re never going back to the forest.”

“Dedulya,” Yuri protests, heart hammering. “I made a promise.”

“You said he—your faerie—he won’t hold you to your debts,” his grandfather points out. “Contracts can be broken. You can’t let them have you. They’re terrible things, they steal children from their cribs and throw away the ones they don’t want, you don’t—you’re not going to become one of them.”

“They’re my friends,” Yuri says, instead of, _I already am_.

His grandfather says, “Yuri.”

The power of his true name slams into Yuri like a sledgehammer. Mila warned him, and Yuri knows, he _knows_ humans use names unthinkingly, unknowingly. But his grandfather told him stories of fey courts and Seelie Queens long before Yuri got desperate enough to believe they existed, he puts out bread every night without fail, and Yuri doesn’t remember the last time his grandfather called him anything but _Yurotchka_.

He should have waited for Viktor.

“You’re not going back to the forest,” his grandfather says, and Yuri feels the order grind deep under his skin, unyielding. Names have power, but Yuri never knew just how much until the balls of his feet dig into the floor where he stands, ready to obey.

“You can’t keep me here,” he says, desperate. There’s something at the back of his throat that tastes like fear, and Yuri doesn’t want that. This is his _grandfather_. “I’m not a child, and I won’t break my promise because you don’t trust the fey.”

“Yes, you will,” his grandfather tells him. His eyes are dull with disappointment. “You will stay in your room tonight, and tomorrow you will not leave this house.”

Yuri’s feet move before he knows what’s happening. He drops his cane but it doesn’t stop him from stumbling towards his room, Potya at his heels and his grandfather watching him go like he doesn’t know the consequences of what he just did.

Yuri goes to his room, and closes the door. His cane is in the kitchen. He looks around, and there are chimes on his window that weren’t there this morning. Only a monarch could come into this home now, and there’s no one Yuri can invite. He sent Mila away.

His grandfather used his name. He’s trying to _keep_ Yuri, bound and moored without a token for an exchange, the way the Winter King stole Viktor.

Yuri is fey, now. There are some things he can’t forgive.

 

 

 

He tries banging on his door. He tries negotiating, and threatening, and pleading through the wood to his grandfather who doesn’t reply.

Dawn breaks outside his window. Viktor will be back soon. He’ll come back, and he’ll wait for Yuri in the forest, Yuri who swore to stay by his side and sent him away. He’ll wait, and he won’t know, because Mila won’t tell him.

There are chimes at Yuri’s window. He should take them down. At least then Viktor will know he isn’t unwelcome in Yuri’s home.

But Viktor won’t come to his home, Yuri realizes slowly. Viktor doesn’t—chase people. If he thinks Yuri wants to leave, he’ll let him go, just like he let the Winter King go.

Yuri puts his head in his hands, and tries very hard not to cry.

 

 

 

His grandfather brings breakfast to him. He puts it on the desk in the corner that Yuri never uses, and sits on the bed where Yuri is staring at the ceiling, dry-eyed and silent. It could almost be like any other day Yuri failed to medal, or the first few days since he—fell—but it’s not. His grandfather pets his hair, and for the first time in his life Yuri tilts his head away from his touch.

“This isn’t a debt you can repay,” Yuri doesn’t look at him. “No human has ever kept a faerie for long.”

“I love you,” his grandfather says, and it is not a lie. “You will remember that, when the contract is broken, and you are no longer under their spell.”

_There is no spell_ , Yuri wants to say, but that’s not entirely right. There have been debts, and consequences. His medal around Viktor’s neck binding them together with magic older than human or fey.

There have been spells, but none of them forced Yuri to come back, and none of them made him choose. The only people who have asked that of him are his humans.

“You’re wrong,” Yuri tells his grandfather, and turns away.

 

 

 

Morning turns into evening. Viktor doesn’t come for him, and neither does Mila.

Yuri’s phone buzzes three times.

 

 

 

“He’s your grandfather,” Otabek says like Yuri doesn’t already know. He looks uncomfortable; he’s listened patiently to Yuri complain about a lot of things over the years, but never his grandfather.

“Can you blame him for being protective?” Otabek asks. “You were afraid of faeries too, before you got to know them.”

Yuri doesn’t know how to explain to him that the reasons don’t fucking _matter_. “Beka,” he says. “There’s going to be a price. There’s always a price.”

Otabek’s eyes are inscrutable through the screen. He’s in his apartment in Toronto; Yuri can see tall buildings through the window behind him, because Otabek never got around to buying curtains.

“Yura,” Otabek finally says, quiet. “Would it really be so bad if you broke the contract?”

Yuri opens his mouth reflexively, then stops. “What,” he says.

Otabek shrugs helplessly. “You didn’t want this—marriage,” he says, only barely stumbling on the word. “You went back there because you felt _obligated_. If you didn’t owe them anything anymore, you could. Do something else.”

“Do something else,” Yuri repeats, uncomprehending.

“There are things you could do that’s not skating, or being indebted to _faeries_ for the rest of your life,” Otabek points out. “Your grandfather—he’s not wrong, Yura. I know you made friends, but this doesn’t have to be your only choice. If you break the contract, you could come back to Toronto. You’ve never liked that village.”

“You’re assuming I want to come back to Toronto,” Yuri says, sharper than he means.

Otabek looks taken aback. “It doesn’t have to be Toronto,” he says. “JJ wants to travel the world after he retires, and you’ve always liked St. Petersburg. The Russia Federation would jump to have you back in any capacity.”

It was the plan, before Yuri met the fey. Before he ran away, and before he came back. He was going to train as a judge. Find a way to stay with skating. Keep talking to the shrink he hasn’t called back in months.

Yuri looks at his best friend who used to know him better than anyone else in the world, who knew Yuri changed before Yuri himself did, and who doesn’t understand now what it took for Yuri to let that go. Otabek told him, _I don’t know if you need me_. Yuri didn’t agree then. He thinks he might now.

“You should stop waiting for me,” he says, and pushes his face into his knees so he doesn’t have to watch Otabek’s expression change. “You should. I don’t know what I can give you anymore. I don’t care about—skating, or your friends, or fucking—having a life I just.”

He wipes his eyes on the fabric of his pants. “I just want my faeries.”

_I want Viktor_ , he doesn’t say, but he thinks Otabek hears it in the silence that follows. Viktor who knows what it’s like to be stolen by someone he loves with no exchange, and the consequences of forgiving that debt. Otabek is too—human. He’s another human who knows Yuri’s name.

Yuri shouldn’t have sent Mila away.

“Yura,” Otabek says, and Yuri tries not to cry at the helplessness in his voice. Otabek deserves _better_. He deserves a best friend who actually fucking _misses_ him, and someone who knows how to love him back. But the fey aren’t genies, and Yuri doesn’t grant wishes.

“Your grandfather loves you,” Otabek tries, entirely out of his depth. “He’ll come around, just give it a few days. I can come down there if you want.”

“No,” Yuri says, too fast. He summons the courage to peer up from his knees and Otabek is looking right back at him, dark eyes wide with hurt. Yuri put that expression on his face, just like he put fear in his grandfather’s eyes.

Suddenly he can’t look at it anymore. Yuri stumbles off the bed and nearly crashes to the floor, hands shaking and cheeks hot with humiliation, and cuts off Otabek’s alarmed, “Yura!” with, “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Wait,” Otabek starts, but Yuri slams his laptop lid closed. His phone buzzes with a call almost immediately, but it’s drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears. His knee buckles under him, still twinging from his fall nearly a day ago, and Yuri looks down at it, his vision tunneling.

This is why he’s here. His fucking leg is the reason he came back to this village he couldn’t wait to leave, why he went into the forest looking for _faeries_. It’s the reason he collared the Summer King and stole him from the Winter King, and left Otabek behind even though he didn’t want to, back then he didn’t want anything more than to stay in Toronto where he couldn’t walk, couldn’t ride Otabek’s bike, couldn’t even climb up a fucking flight of stairs into a restaurant. If his leg hadn’t fucking _deteriorated_ instead of _healing_ like it should have, Yuri wouldn’t be fey at all, and his grandfather wouldn’t have locked him up like a faerie bride with stolen wings.

Yuri looks down at his leg, and hates it more than he’s hated anything in his life. It churns in his chest like pitted rage, awful and all-consuming, and before he can stop himself he pulls his bad leg up with both hands and swings it into the solid wooden leg of the bedframe.

The pain is immediate and blinding, and brings him to his knees. Yuri bites his tongue and swallows it down, and claws at his blankets to pull himself back up. Potya hisses at him, startled, but Yuri ignores him.

Viktor isn’t coming. Mila left because he asked. They’ll think he abandoned them again, and there won’t be any summer magic to take this away.

Yuri kicks the bedframe again, and again, and one more time before the pain sends him sprawling to the floor, vomit bubbling up his throat and nose. He throws up and it’s just bile and water spewing down his front like an uncoordinated drunk, and the smell makes him keep gagging until his stomach cramps in on itself and tears and snot run down his face. His arms give out and he collapses in his own sick, pain overwhelming pride enough to finally, _finally_ let him cry.

Potya yowls louder; Yuri hears him scratching at the closed door, but he doesn’t have the energy to raise his head. His leg is a single line of fire down his side, clawing up his hips and back. He doesn’t know where the keening noise is coming from. He can’t bring himself to care.

Outside, it begins to rain.

 

 

 

He doesn’t know how long he lies there. The room grows darker, shadows creeping up the walls. Potya eventually comes to investigate, and Yuri manages to raise his arm enough to shove him away before he can lick at the mess Yuri made.

There’s a soft _thump_ by the door. “Yurotchka?” he hears distantly, then, “Yura!” and suddenly there are large arms around him, pulling him up off the floor. Yuri blinks up at his grandfather’s worried eyes with childlike incomprehension.

“I’m okay,” he says reflexively as his grandfather checks him over, looking for injuries. He hisses when he pulls up Yuri’s pant, where his leg is swollen and red underneath. Yuri doesn’t really feel it anymore.

“What happened?” his grandfather asks, already pulling on Yuri’s stained shirt. “Did you fall?”

The rain is very loud; it’s drowning out his grandfather’s voice. Yuri takes a moment to parse the question, then says, “No.”

If his grandfather is concerned by Yuri’s slowness, he doesn’t show it. He works quickly, stripping Yuri as efficiently as he would a child and helping him sit up against the wall, then getting up to bring him fresh clothes and a damp towel. He wipes down Yuri’s snot-covered face, then threads Yuri’s arms through the new shirt.

“Your leg needs ice,” he says, using the towel to wipe up as much of the floor as he can. Yuri stifles his gag reflex; now that he’s more aware, he’s starting to smell the bile. “I’ll get your painkillers.”

His grandfather’s knees crack audibly as he stands again. Yuri tilts his head back to follow him up, and it’s like looking at a faded painting. It’s hard to reconcile this kind-faced old man with his grandfather, who drove him an hour to ballet practice and waved goodbye when he boarded the train to St. Petersburg, who scolded him for being careless and rude but not once for doing what he thought he had to do.

Yuri can’t remember if his grandfather’s hair was always this white.

“You’re really not going to let me go,” he realizes with a heavy, aching certainty. His grandfather closes his eyes.

“The fey don’t give back what they take, Yurotchka,” he says. His shoulders don’t look so strong like this, hunched forward against the damp chill of the room. “I will not let them take you.”

Yuri wants to tell him that they won’t. Mila said they would come to him, and Viktor promised the same. His faeries will follow him where he goes even if he infringes on another monarch’s territory. He belongs to them now, the same way they are his.

“I will be right back, Yurotchka,” his grandfather says, and Yuri bites his tongue and lets him go. These are not things his grandfather, or Otabek, can understand anymore.

The room is cold from the open window, thunder crashing beyond the trees. Yuri’s leg is starting to scream for attention, numbness wearing off. His cane is still in the kitchen, probably. Yuri looks to his side, and there are his skates sitting right under the bed. His unnamed stuffed tiger is lying somewhere on his mattress. The two treasures that were more important to him than the gold, that Viktor let him keep.

Yuri thinks he could live without them.

 

 

 

His grandfather cleans up, then does his best to haul Yuri to the bed when Yuri refuses to be driven to the hospital. He brings dinner in bed. It’s only potatoes and greens so Yuri swallows his painkillers and eats dutifully, pretending to feel better when his grandfather asks. After, Potya curls up at his feet, and Yuri folds his stuffed tiger into his arms and closes his eyes, the world gone hazy and pain-free from the strength of the drugs.

He dreams of summer grass beneath his feet, and melting snow.

 

 

 

The first thing he feels, as always, is his fucking leg. It overtakes all his other senses and Yuri turns his face into the pillow, biting down on it to stifle a scream. He writhes under the covers and punches at the mattress, and suddenly there are long fingers in his hair and hard pressure on his leg, holding him down.

“Yura, hold still,” Viktor says, and Yuri reacts instinctively, going limp under his hands. Viktor’s magic pours through him like sunlight, warm and soothing, and Yuri blinks up at him through wet lashes, sluggish and confused. The pillow under his cheek is damp.

“You’re here,” he slurs, but Viktor isn’t looking at him. His attention is on Yuri’s leg, brows creased with concentration as he throws his power into numbing Yuri’s pain. He makes a soft, unhappy sound.

“I can’t fix this,” he says, not even trying to hide his frustration. Yuri reaches for him unthinkingly, and Viktor turns to him like a flower to the sun. “This is all I can do.”

“Doesn’t hurt anymore,” Yuri says, mind heavy with drugs and magic. His leg is a useless lump of flesh; he has to use both arms to pull himself up against the headboard.

He looks from Viktor the open window, then back again. It feels too much like a dream, so he asks, “Are you real?”

Viktor makes another wounded noise. When he crawls onto the mattress and into Yuri’s lap, his gold medal swings into Yuri’s jaw. The bit of pain wakes him up, but more real than that is the summer-fresh smell of Viktor’s skin and the familiar feeling of his hair spilling over Yuri’s legs. Viktor is too tall to fit under Yuri’s chin but he tries anyway, pressing their bodies together like this is something they’ve always done.

“You’re hurt,” he says, trembling against Yuri like a frightened animal. “I felt you hurting, but I was so far away.”

Far away. He was with the Winter King. He left the Winter King to come to Yuri, even though Mila didn’t tell him, and Yuri didn’t ask.

Yuri cups the back of Viktor’s head in his hand. “It wouldn’t have been better if you were nearby,” he says, amused despite himself and terribly, terribly flattered. He forgot that Viktor doesn’t really understand human hurt. It’s what Yuri was counting on when he first went looking for faeries, that they would find his disability an inconvenience they could easily fix. “I didn’t think you were coming at all.”

Viktor pulls away, eyes big with indignation. “You are my _husband_ ,” he says, like it’s not the first time he’s ever said it out loud. Yuri’s breath catches in his throat. “You sent me away, but I came back, like I promised. I knew something was wrong when you didn’t meet me this morning, and then it started to rain, and I sent our fey but there was protection everywhere! Why didn’t you _call_ me, did you think I wouldn’t come if you called?”

Yuri is startled by his vehemence. “You didn’t think I abandoned you again?” he asks, and Viktor scoffs at him.

“Promises aren’t made to be broken,” he says, with all the confidence of a child yet to meet an oathbreaker. Yuri tries to be annoyed, but it’s a little funny. All of Viktor’s trust issues, dissolved with a few simple words.

“People break them all the time,” he says, and Viktor shakes his head so hard his hair whips around his head.

“You asked me to have _faith_ ,” he reminds Yuri, almost petulant. “I did.”

The fey can’t lie, and Yuri doesn’t know what to do with that. He thinks he knew already; Viktor believes in promises even if Yuri doesn’t always, but words are more powerful spoken out loud. Viktor left the Winter King and his forest, because he thought Yuri needed him. He called Yuri _husband_ like he never has before, and didn’t touch his medal once.

_You don’t know what you want_ , Viktor told him not a day ago, but Yuri knows now what he doesn’t want. He thinks he might have known for a while, and just been—afraid.

He hears the front door open, then close. His grandfather is home, and he’s going to come to check on him, but Yuri isn’t scared anymore. He is _owed_.

“Viktor,” he says. “I don’t want to be here.”

He sees comprehension dawn on Viktor’s face, slow and terrible, just as the door to his room squeaks open.

There’s an awful silence as Viktor and his grandfather look at each other from across the room. Yuri sees his grandfather’s eyes fall to the medal on Viktor’s chest, and wonders if he understands just what he’s brought into this house.

“You were not invited,” his grandfather says.

Viktor slides to his feet in one smooth motion, like Yuri won’t ever manage again. “I am in my husband’s home,” he says. “I have his invitation.”

Yuri can’t invite anyone, not the way he is, but Viktor isn’t wrong, and he won’t give his grandfather any more ammunition than his name. He always thought he needed to know Viktor’s name to hold him back, but he’s starting to understand that it’s not the fey he needs to be cautious of, not anymore.

His grandfather doesn’t look afraid, even though Viktor is more dangerous than Mila could ever be. “You’re not taking my grandson,” he says, steel in his voice. “You wear his gift; all you have to do is ask him, and he’ll release you.”

Viktor turns to Yuri, amused. “Would you really?” he asks, and Yuri pulls himself together enough to scoff, “No.”

Viktor gifts him with a rare, private smile. “I didn’t think so,” he says.

Something about this makes his grandfather pause. He looks at Yuri, dragging himself to the edge of the bed and using his hands to swing his stiff leg down, then back at Viktor, his big, bright wings spread behind him like a warning.

“He made a mistake,” his grandfather tries again, ignoring the way Yuri bristles. “He is not accountable to you.”

Viktor’s smile grows sharp. Yuri knows that smile; he reaches for Viktor’s wrist, but Viktor steps away from his touch.

“ _I_ am not the one who used his name,” Viktor says. “ _I_ did not take advantage of his trust, and it was not me who chained him to this place. I returned to him everything he owed, and never once forced him to choose.”

Viktor’s anger is vicious. It’s a thing of beauty, and Yuri has never seen it from this end. Viktor steps towards his grandfather, and Yuri doesn’t stop him.

“You hurt my husband,” Viktor spits, drawing himself so tight his wings shiver. “You hurt the summer prince, and kept him when you had no right, and now I’ve come to take him back. Did you think, thief, that there would be no price?”

Yuri’s grandfather opens his mouth, then closes it. Yuri looks at this person he loves more than anything else in the world, and the most he can summon is a strange, disquieting apathy. There’s a small part of him that _wants_ to keep his grandfather in debt.

Yuri isn’t fond of that part. He struggles to his feet and leans on the bedpost for balance.

“Viktor,” he says. “My cane is in the kitchen. I can’t walk without it.”

Viktor stops short, and when he turns around to look at Yuri, he actually rolls his eyes. Yuri almost laughs, even though it’s not funny. Viktor is the Summer King, but Yuri knows he’ll do as Yuri asked, and let him speak to his grandfather alone before they leave.

He’s leaving. The thought is a little startling, but not upsetting. Yuri looks around this room he’s spent nearly a year in, that he grew up in, and can’t imagine missing it.

The silence drags on in Viktor’s wake, when he’s walked past Yuri’s grandfather without a word. Yuri toes his shoes out from under the bed, and slides them on.

“Don’t worry, dedulya,” he says. “I’ll come to visit Potya.”

“Potya,” his grandfather says, and the fight seems to go out of him. Yuri was always going to outlive his grandfather, but it’s never been as obvious as it is now, his grandfather’s face lined with misery.

Yuri tries and fails to feel guilty. “What did you think would happen?” he asks, curious. “You know the stories. The faerie bride always leaves at the end.”

His grandfather closes his eyes for a long moment. When he looks again, his lashes are wet. “It was not what I meant to do,” he says. “I wanted to protect you.”

“I love you too,” Yuri tells him, and it’s not a lie. “But I am not yours to keep.”

 

 

 

He walks away. He leaves and doesn’t turn back, stopping only to pet Potya for a brief moment when he comes whining for attention, like he knows Yuri’s leaving. Potya was always good at waiting for him at home; Yuri doesn’t think that will change, but it’s the one moment he feels a pang of loss. Potya was the only company he had for so long.

When he steps past the threshold without a glance back, his grandfather calls, “ _Yuri_.”

Yuri stills, but Viktor swings back to meet him like he didn’t just learn Yuri’s name. He takes Yuri’s hand and leads him past the threshold, slow enough that Yuri’s cane doesn’t slip in the mud. Yuri sees a flash of red in the dark, Mila watching over them and the house, ready to come to him if he calls.

Yuri walks away, and his grandfather lets him go.

 

 

 

It should have been strange, stepping through the faerie ring to a Court where there is no Court, lying down beneath the night sky with crinkling grass under his back and shadows moving over the trees.

It should have been strange, but all it feels like is home.

 

 

 

Somehow it’s just as unsurprising to wake up next to Viktor. Yuri rolls towards his warmth and tries to just _not think_ for another few minutes, but the medal presses uncomfortably between them and Viktor’s hair gets in his mouth, and by the time Yuri’s done untangling himself Viktor is blinking up at him with sleepy blue eyes. He smiles at Yuri, hazy and unfairly beautiful, and Yuri has to duck his burning cheeks away and pretend he’s hiding from the rising sun.

Viktor is undeterred; he drapes himself over Yuri shamelessly, like yesterday somehow made him forget all the reasons he had to hold himself back. He’s no different from their fey this morning, tactile and trusting, and Yuri suddenly wonders if it’s because now he knows Yuri’s name.

If Viktor feels him tense, he doesn’t mention it. He rubs his head against Yuri’s cheek like a cat, his medal folding over Yuri’s chest like it did a lifetime ago. It feels—familiar, and right. Yuri pets Viktor’s hair and doesn’t think about it. Viktor melts into him, content, and that’s something Yuri can pay attention to, all the new things he’ll learn about his faeries now, and his husband.

Viktor called him husband, last night. He came for Yuri and took him away, and let him have his freedom the way a summer fey should. Once upon a time, Yuri might have wished to marry Mila instead. He doesn’t anymore.

Eventually Viktor must get bored, because he sits up and tilts his head at Yuri’s stretched leg. “Does it hurt?” he asks, and Yuri blinks, surprised.

“Only a little,” he says. His pain in the morning is immediate and intolerable; it can take up to an hour for him to bend his knee enough to get out of bed. After what he did to it yesterday Yuri should be writhing on the ground praying to die, but his leg twinges at him with the kind of dull constant pain he’s gotten so used to he can forget it’s there.

Viktor pulls up Yuri’s pants, peering at his leg thoughtfully. Yuri leans up on his elbows; his skin below the thigh is a mottled mess of purple and blue, further along in healing than it should be. His leg isn’t even swollen anymore.

Viktor evidently isn’t satisfied. He wraps his hands around Yuri’s calf and tries to push magic into him, and Yuri snorts.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he says. The kind of power Viktor has, it’s good for numbing, but Yuri’s pain today is as numbed as it’s going to get.

Viktor purses his lips. “But you’re hurt,” he protests.

Yuri flops back for a moment, staring at the sky. He’s not going to get any more sleep, but at least this is a good distraction. When he sits up again, Viktor is frowning at him with undisguised affront.

“I’m always going to be hurt,” Yuri points out, and it’s not as hard to say out loud as he thought it would be. “My leg won’t heal, Viktor. I realized that pretty soon after you starting working on it. It might get a bit better, but I’m always going to need a cane to walk. You can’t fix me.”

Viktor drags his hands down Yuri’s leg. “It would be nice if I could,” he admits quietly, sending a pulse of tickling magic dancing across Yuri’s toes. Yuri squawks in surprise, and Viktor almost smiles. “You left everything behind for my fey. I would like to give you something in return.”

Yuri draws in a sharp breath. “I didn’t like being trapped,” he says.

“Me neither,” Viktor says, because this is another thing they share. “But I am—sorry.”

Yuri stares at him. “Sorry,” he says. “For what?”

“Not like that,” Viktor says impatiently. “I’m sorry for your loss, isn’t that what you say?”

_Not sincerely_ , Yuri almost retorts, but bites his tongue. It isn’t fey custom to apologize with words, especially not for things that aren’t their fault, but Viktor is trying to offer Yuri—comfort, the way he thinks Yuri will understand.

Yuri isn’t unfamiliar with the way he feels when Viktor’s shift rides up his thighs, but sitting across from him in dew-damp grass, it’s impossible to deny that he’s grown stupid fond of this faerie of his.

“I didn’t do it for them, you know,” he says abruptly. “What I gave up, it wasn’t for our faeries, or for you.”

Viktor almost smiles. “No?” he asks.

“No,” Yuri says, a little annoyed because it’s not _funny_. “You don’t owe me anything, Viktor.”

“Maybe not,” Viktor agrees, definitely smiling now. “But I would like to give you this.”

He pushes Yuri’s hands together like he did once before, kneeling on the floor in Yuri’s room. Yuri watches with wide eyes as Viktor puts his hands in the space between Yuri’s palms.

“I will make you a promise, my Yura,” Viktor tells him, eyes very blue, and very kind. “I will never use your name.”

He’s never looked more fey than he does now, wings brightened by the soft morning light and pale hair spilling down his shoulders, Yuri’s medal gleaming on his chest. Yuri looks from the brown hands curled in his own to Viktor’s lovely face, and something foreign flutters in his chest that feels a lot like _faith_.

 

 

 

Viktor doesn’t ask where he’s going, or why. He doesn’t ask to come along. He only kisses Yuri goodbye at the edge of the faerie ring, and smiles against his mouth when Yuri presses close to kiss him again, and one more time before he leaves.

 

 

 

“Hello,” the Winter King says, looking up at Yuri from where he’s sitting in the snow like Viktor sits in a puddle of sunshine. “This is unexpected. You keep surprising everyone, golden prince.”

It’s a warmer welcome than Yuri was expecting, considering what happened the last time they met. Viktor came before him, though, and Yuri supposes they must have—talked.

“For you,” Yuri says, laying his armful of daisies in the snow. “For coming without an invitation.”

It’s a meager gift, but the Winter King looks pleased. He reaches forward to pick one up, and Yuri takes an involuntary step back.

“Viktor likes dahlias,” the Winter King says, plucking a petal off the yellow flower. “But these suit you. Are they payment for your questions, too?”

Yuri blinks, and the Winter King shakes his head. “There aren’t many reasons you’d come to see me without an escort,” he points out. “You’re afraid of me.”

“I am not,” Yuri says reflexively, then reconsiders. “I’m—cautious. I took something from you.”

“You can’t take people away, golden prince,” the Winter King tells him. “They’re not things.”

Yuri can’t help it; he rolls his eyes. “That’s such a stupid thing to say,” he snaps. “We are _fey_. Don’t act like you’re any better; he may be mine now, but you stole him first.”

The Winter King bristles, almost imperceptive, but Yuri isn’t getting anywhere fast by being polite, and it’s getting colder the longer he stays. “That’s not why I’m here,” Yuri says. “I’m here because you’re like me.”

“Like you,” the Winter King repeats, like Yuri hasn’t seen more winter fey than him, and doesn’t know by now why it’s only the two of them who are wingless.

“Did you stay with your family,” Yuri wants to know. “Or did you leave?”

“Oh,” the Winter King says. He rearranges the fur of his cloak, and waves his tall staff to sweep a clearing in the snow. Yuri doesn’t particularly want to, but he accepts the invitation, balancing on his cane to lower himself to the frozen ground that goes soft under him. Unlike with Viktor or Mila or Zhora, he stretches his leg out to the side.

“I left,” the Winter King tells him when he’s settled, even though he could choose not to answer Yuri’s questions. There’s more human left in him than he pretends. “But it wasn’t like you. I couldn’t stand to see them grow old and die, so I left before that could happen.”

“Did you ever go back?” Yuri asks.

“No,” the Winter King says. “Will you?”

There are many reasons Winter King frightens him, even though he’s kinder, and far more human than Viktor. The Winter King is everything Yuri doesn’t want to be.

“Yes,” Yuri says. “There’s always spring.”

“Autumn,” the Winter King says, and Yuri realizes that there probably is no spring for him, the way there will never be another winter for Yuri. The Winter King shakes his head, and looks at Yuri with a strange kind of pity. “You want to, what? Abandon your husband twice a year, every year until your humans die?”

Anger flares in the pit of Yuri’s stomach. The Winter King has no right to speak to him this way. “I’m not a coward,” he says pointedly, a little cruel, maybe. “I stopped running away, and I’m not going to start again. Viktor is my _friend_. He knows I’ll never abandon him again.”

He doesn’t add, _unlike you_ , but the Winter King’s face darkens like he hears it anyway. “You think that’s how it will stay?” he scoffs, the yellow daisy he’s still holding withering in his palm. “You’ll be friends, and rule together in the summer, then go your own ways when the season turns?”

He pauses, startled by the vehemence in his own voice. If he were human, he might have apologized, but all he does is drop the blackened flower and pick up another. This one doesn’t fade. “You’re _naïve_ , golden prince,” he says, mouth turned down at the corners. “Summer is for passion, and you are summer fey. You are _married_. You’ll live with your husband, and you’ll forget your humans. Or your humans will die, and everything will change. What you and Viktor are trying to hold onto isn’t _possible_.”

Yuri doesn’t even know if Otabek will want him for two seasons a year, or if it would be all that bad if he didn’t. He remembers his grandfather, watching him walk away with blue eyes clouded with age and sadness, and his cat, and knows they would.

“Maybe,” he tells the Winter King, thinking of Viktor and his unpracticed anger, and his petal-soft kisses that taste like rain. Yuri thinks he might like to love him, someday. “But that won’t happen for a long time. You can sit here and believe in your inevitabilities, but I’m going to get up and fucking _try_.”

 

 

 

“You’ve changed, golden prince,” Mila says when she meets him at the faerie ring where he left her to wait, arms wrapped around herself against the chill of winter. “How will you pay back all your debts?”

Yuri has his answers. Everything else is up to Viktor and the Winter King. This is not his business anymore. He digs his cane into the snow, limping ahead.

“I’ll figure it out,” he says. “I’m getting good at that.”

 

 

 

His grandfather is home, the windows open and unlocked, but Yuri doesn’t go in the front door, or the back. He lets Mila lift him through the window without a chime, and when Potya bounds in after his smell Yuri sits on the floor and pets him quiet.

There aren’t many things he wants to take. His stuffed tiger, because it’s soft, not his skates, because they’re no longer a treasure. His books and comics go into his backpack, and a few sets of light clothes.

His phone is lying on his bed where he left it, almost entirely out of charge. There are a few messages from Otabek, and one from Leroy. Yuri looks at them both for a long moment, then taps the message box.

_keep an eye on beka for me_ , he sends to Leroy. _call my grandfather if you need to get in touch._

To Otabek, he writes, _i can give you spring, if you want it_

Then, he goes back to his King, and his summer fey.

 

 

 

Viktor falls into him at the turn of spring, lips black as his fingertips and snow still clinging to his eyelashes. He shivers in Yuri’s arms and seals their mouths together, and Yuri breathes Summer back into his veins, bright and warm and radiant the way Winter can never be. Viktor kisses his throat, then his wrist, like he wants to lick away the smog still clinging to Yuri’s skin. The medal presses between their chests, unyielding, but neither of them pushes it away.

Yuri lays his husband down on the grass, and lets Viktor’s smile make him forget his name.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A song that really helped me in the creative process was [_She_ by Charles Aznavour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxaZMreym88).
> 
> My beta, [shortprints](https://shortprints.tumblr.com), drew some incredible concept art for the fic! Her work was instrumental to the development of Viktor's look in particular (you can see him evolve from sketch 3, the first concept, to sketch 1, what we finally somewhat settled on). They're all incredible, so please take a look!
> 
> Viktor: [1](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/163419228158/shortprints-an-old-sketch-and-a-new-sketch-for) || [2](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/161297388098/shortprints-flowers-have-the-best-gossip-two) || [3](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/161297367288/shortprints-foxfireflamequeen-was-talking-about)
> 
> [Mila](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/161297407578/shortprints-yet-another-fairy-for)
> 
> [Chris](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/161439390498/shortprints-more-from-foxfireflamequeen-s-fairy)
> 
> [Yuuri](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/160451347973/shortprints-winter-king-yuuri-from)
> 
> Comments are love, and you can also [reblog on tumblr](http://foxfireflamequeen.tumblr.com/post/163575814083/he-walked-like-looked-like-burned-like-summer)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Art] he (walked like, looked like) burned like summer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11905002) by [thisiseclair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiseclair/pseuds/thisiseclair)




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